Golf Green Slope Estimation Using a Cross Laser Structured Light System and an Accelerometer

In this paper, we propose a method combining an accelerometer with a cross structured light system to estimate the golf green slope. The cross-line laser provides two laser planes whose functions are computed with respect to the camera coordinate frame using a least square optimization. By capturing the projections of the cross-line laser on the golf slope in a static pose using a camera, two 3D curves’ functions are approximated as high order polynomials corresponding to the camera coordinate frame. Curves’ functions are then expressed in the world coordinate frame utilizing a rotation matrix that is estimated based on the accelerometer’s output. The curves provide some important information of the green such as the height and the slope’s angle. The curves estimation accuracy is verified via some experiments which use OptiTrack camera system as a ground-truth reference.