# Automatic Calibration of Multiple 3D LiDARs in Urban Environments

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.04912 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.04912/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 13 May 2019.

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [CROON: Automatic Multi-LiDAR Calibration and Refinement Method in Road Scene](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.03182/) (2022)
- [CaLiV: LiDAR-to-Vehicle Calibration of Arbitrary Sensor Setups](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.01987/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Multiple LiDARs have progressively emerged on autonomous vehicles for rendering a wide field of view and dense measurements. However, the lack of precise calibration negatively affects their potential applications in localization and perception systems. In this paper, we propose a novel system that enables automatic multi-LiDAR calibration without any calibration target, prior environmental information, and initial values of the extrinsic parameters. Our approach starts with a hand-eye calibration for automatic initialization by aligning the estimated motions of each sensor. The resulting parameters are then refined with an appearance-based method by minimizing a cost function constructed from point-plane correspondences. Experimental results on simulated and real-world data sets demonstrate the reliability and accuracy of our calibration approach. The proposed approach can calibrate a multi-LiDAR system with the rotation and translation errors less than 0.04 [rad] and 0.1 [m] respectively for a mobile platform.