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Abstract. As one of the most essential parameters for field machine operation such as land preparation, planting, irrigation and so on, soil surface roughness plays an important role in the development of precision agriculture. With potential to obtain soil surface roughness parameter, the structured-light sensor camera system can provide a non-contact detecting solution for rapid measurement of this parameter in field, while the basis for its accurate measurement is the calibration of the measurement system. In this work, a calibration method for self-design target of structured-light sensor camera system was presented. On the self-design workbench, the calibration target was immobilized on a movable support and then moved forward with same steps through the entire image acquisition range when the camera captured the image. The vertex image plane coordinates and the coordinate information in the plane of light were extracted and analysis with the penalty function constraint method. The results shown that the maximum error was -0.0653 mm while the minimum error is 0.0184 mm, which indicated that this method could calibrate the soil surface roughness measurement system with high accuracy. Without needing of other instruments for measuring the coordinates of the point on the light plane, this calibration method provided a simple and fast technical basis for subsequent use of structured-light sensor camera system in obtaining soil surface roughness parameters.