Date: May 7
Year: 2017
Location: Mesla HQ
Subject: Mesla crash while operating on Autopilot.
Bob is at the helm of the camera calibration team at Mesla, he has been leading this department since it’s inception. Mesla’s managerial heads and legal department are breathing down his neck. It isn’t getting any easier for Bob at all. It is a long day ahead for him.
The death of a 40-year old Joshua Brown has shaken up the whole autonomous of Mesla. Everyone is under fire, especially the teams working with sensor fusion as the algorithm and systems division has been cleared of any wrongdoing. With the recent rise in accidents relating to Autopilot, the pressure on the calibration team for the designing and operating fail-safe sensor-fusion arrays is more than ever. Calibration is a crucial component for any application which involves an engineering system operating on sensor-fusion. What can get Bob out of this snafu?
Well first and foremost, he has to make sure that all the vision based systems in the vehicles, specifically the cameras are always calibrated. That’s a bummer, he can’t have the cars being dragged into the service center after every Autopilot operated instance. That would just be impractical and plain suicidal for an automotive company. Disappointed with himself, Bob goes to the bar to get a pint and calm his nerves.
At the bar counter, Bob runs into an old friend of his – Shake. Bob cannot contain himself and spills his guts out to Shake. Shake hears Bob’s blabbering for an hour and so and realizes that he has the perfect solution for Bob! He can’t stand seeing his friend under so much stress and decides to take him to his lab down at Cranberry-Lemon University.
Location: Cranberry-Lemon University & Octopus VR technologies collaboration lab.
For 1 year Shake and his team have been working on this revolutionary idea of automating camera calibration and very excited to reveal his system to his dear friend Bob. Shake goes on to show his system:
Excalibr is a multi-camera calibration system, all contained in one box! The beauty of this system is that this calibration box can be stored in the trunk of a car and can calibrate as many cameras as they want. But is this reality?! Yes, it is. The Excalibr is a self-contained calibration setup. There a proprietary mechanisms and software algorithms by which a multitude of self-changing calibration targets can be used to calibrate camera systems remotely. The Excalibr calibration box is a hermetically sealed setup where a mobile robotic mechanism moves the calibration targets around and optical fibers transmit the light from the box in the trunk to the different cameras on the autonomous cars internally. This ensures that the not only can the cameras be checked for calibration status when the vehicle is at rest or human driving mode but also calibrated in real-time if necessary. Shake’s idea will enable automatic real-time calibration of cameras throughout the vehicle, irrespective of the location of the camera. The calibration box aforementioned has been visualized below in Figure 2.1, where the optical fibers transmitting the light from the box to the camera lenses are color coded as orange. The box communicates with an onboard computer to run the calibration algorithms on the images.
Figure 2.1 Excalibr Calibration Box Setup with movable reconfigurable calibration target.
Bob is flabbergasted after witnessing what Shake has been working on, it is the perfect solution to his problem! Not only he can ensure that his vision systems on Mesla cars work but also fix the calibration on them if necessary, all while the vehicle is operational! Shake’s Excalibr technology will not only prevent countless accidents in the near future but also save many lives in the days to come! A victory for Shake and his system- Excalibr.