Design, calibration and synchronization of a bicycle mapping platform

In this master thesis, we focused on the preparation of a low-budget mobile mapping system suitable for mounting on a bicycle. This topic formed since the mapping systems are mostly made from expensive sensors which makes it unaffordable for many applications. After having the hardware parts mounted on a model-designed platform we continue to make the system ready for data acquisition. Followed by multiple experiments to justify the system and its limitations. Later on, we did system calibration which in our case consists of camera calibration and extrinsic LIDAR-camera calibration, using this, we did a couple of outdoor data acquisitions and repetition of the system calibration. The results from the experiments are discussed afterwards from which we observed that the camera calibration parameters are oscillating significantly, besides, the transformation parameters estimated by the extrinsic calibration was not constant. These points brought us to the conclusion that the stability of the calibration parameters is needed to be studied in depth in order to find the accuracy of the system. Nevertheless, we managed to colourize the point cloud with the obtained calibration parameters and they were visually correct.