In the dairy farming industry, we can obtain the temperature, color, and location
information of dairy cows by patrol inspection robot so as to monitor
the health status and abnormal behaviors of dairy cows. We build and
calibrate a heterogeneous binocular stereo vision (HBSV) system
comprising a high-definition color camera and infrared thermal camera
and mount it on a patrol inspection robot. First, based on the
traditional chessboard, an easy-to-make calibration board for the HBSV
system is designed. Second, an accurate locating and sorting algorithm
for the calibration points of the calibration board is designed. Then,
the cameras are calibrated and the HBSV system is stereo-calibrated.
Finally, target locating is achieved based on the above calibration
results and Yolo target detection technology. In this paper, several
experiments are carried out from many aspects. The target locating
average error of HBSV system is 3.11%, which satisfies the needs of
the dairy farming environment. The video’s FPS captured by using HBSV
is 7.3, which is 78% higher than that by using binocular stereo vision
system and infrared thermal camera. The results show that the HBSV
system has application value to a certain degree.