Starting with TIER IV's CalibrationTools#

Overview#

Autoware expects to have multiple sensors attached to the vehicle as input to perception, localization, and planning stack. These sensors must be calibrated correctly, and their positions must be defined in the config/ folder of the <YOUR-VEHICLE-NAME>_sensor_kit_description package. In this tutorial, we will use TIER IV's CalibrationTools repository for the calibration.

Setting of sensor_kit_base_link position with respect to the base_link#

In previous section (creating the vehicle and sensor model), we mentioned about sensors_calibration.yaml. This file stores sensor_kit_base_link (child frame) position and orientation with respect to the base_link (parent frame). We need to update this relative position (all values were initially set equal to zero when file is created) with using CAD data of our vehicle.

So, our sensors_calibration.yaml file for our tutorial_vehicle should be like this:

base_link:
  sensor_kit_base_link:
    x: 1.600000 # meter
    y: 0.0
    z: 1.421595 # 1.151595m + 0.270m
    roll: 0.0
    pitch: 0.0
    yaw: 0.0

You need to update this transformation value with respect to the sensor_kit_base_link frame. You can also use CAD values for GNSS/INS and IMU position in sensor_kit_calibration.yaml file. Both files are in the config/ folder of your sensor kit description package.

Installing TIER IV's CalibrationTools repositories on autoware#

After completing previous steps (creating your own autoware, creating a vehicle and sensor model etc.) we are ready to calibrate sensors which prepared their pipeline in creating the sensor model section. CalibrationTools supports Ubuntu 22.04 with ROS 2 Humble and Ubuntu 24.04 with ROS 2 Jazzy.

Firstly, we will clone CalibrationTools repositories in own autoware.

cd <YOUR-OWN-AUTOWARE-DIRECTORY> # for example: cd autoware.tutorial_vehicle
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tier4/CalibrationTools/tier4/universe/calibration_tools_autoware.repos
vcs import src < calibration_tools_autoware.repos
rosdep install -y --from-paths src --ignore-src --rosdistro $ROS_DISTRO

Then build the all packages after the all necessary changes are made on sensor model and vehicle model.

colcon build --symlink-install --cmake-args -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release

Usage of CalibrationTools#

The CalibrationTools repository has several calibrator packages for calibrating different sensor pairs such as lidar-lidar, camera-lidar, ground-lidar etc. The sensor_calibration_manager package gives one user interface for all extrinsic calibrators. It starts the calibrator with a launch file, makes sure that the required tf frames are available, and saves the result.

Start it with this command, after you source your Autoware workspace:

ros2 run sensor_calibration_manager sensor_calibration_manager

Then do these steps:

1. Select a project and a calibrator, and click Continue. A project is a set of launch files for one vehicle type. The default_project shows most parameters of each calibrator, so you can use it with your own vehicle without new files.
2. Set the arguments of the launch file in the Launcher configuration window, for example the frame names and the topic names of your sensors. Then click Launch.
3. Play your rosbag, or start your sensors. When the calibrator service and the required tf frames are available, the Calibrate button becomes active. If you remap the tf topics of the rosbag, publish the tf of your vehicle with tier4_vehicle_launch (see the manual calibration page).
4. Click Calibrate. Some calibrators need more input, for example points that you select in RViz.
5. Check the result in the Calibration tree and Final TF tree widgets, and click Save calibration.
6. Copy the calibrated values to sensor_kit_calibration.yaml or sensors_calibration.yaml in your sensor kit description package, and build the package again. If the saved frames are different from the frames in these files, convert the values first. The page of each calibrator tells you which frames it saves.

The manager remembers your last configuration in ~/.config/tier4/sensor_calibration_manager.conf. If you calibrate your vehicles often, you can create your own project with your frame names and topic names. See the Integration section of the CalibrationTools README for the steps.

The following pages explain each calibration:

• Manual Calibration
• Lidar-Lidar Calibration
  • Ground Plane-Lidar Calibration
• Intrinsic Camera Calibration
• Lidar-Camera Calibration
• Lidar-Imu Calibration