STRICT GEOMETRIC CALIBRATION OF AN UNDERWATER LASER TRIANGULATION SYSTEM

This paper will describe a novel approach for the calibration of an underwater laser triangulation system. Underwater triangulation systems, consisting of a line laser and a camera can be used to determine the geometry of submerged objects or the topography of a water body bottom. Placing camera and laser line projector inside a waterproof housing leads to refraction effects at the air-glass-water interfaces, both of the laser light-sheet and image rays. This implies a deformed laser plane in the water and a curved line on the object surface. The proposed approach strictly models the geometry between camera, laser and housing. First experiments show, that the calibration method can be applied for water depth measurements with accuracies of 0.2–0.3 mm at depths in the order of 100 mm.

A Multi Camera and Multi Laser Calibration Method for 3D Reconstruction of Revolution Parts

This paper describes a method for calibrating multi camera and multi laser 3D triangulation systems, particularly for those using Scheimpflug adapters. Under this configuration, the focus plane of the camera is located at the laser plane, making it difficult to use traditional calibration methods, such as chessboard pattern-based strategies. Our method uses a conical calibration object whose intersections with the laser planes generate stepped line patterns that can be used to calculate the camera-laser homographies. The calibration object has been designed to calibrate scanners for revolving surfaces, but it can be easily extended to linear setups. The experiments carried out show that the proposed system has a precision of 0.1 mm.

Design and Analysis of High-Accuracy Telecentric Surface Reconstruction System Based on Line Laser

Non-contact measurement technology based on triangulation with cameras is extensively applied to the development of computer vision. However, the accuracy of the technology is generally not satisfactory enough. The application of telecentric lenses can significantly improve the accuracy, but the view of telecentric lenses is limited due to their structure. To address these challenges, a telecentric surface reconstruction system is designed for surface detection, which consists of a single camera with a telecentric lens, line laser generator and one-dimensional displacement platform. The designed system can reconstruct the surface with high accuracy. The measured region is expanded with the used of the displacement platform. To achieve high-accuracy surface reconstruction, we propose a method based on a checkerboard to calibrate the designed system, including line laser plane and motor direction of the displacement platform. Based on the calibrated system, the object under the line laser is measured, and the results of lines are assembled to make the final surface reconstruction. The results show that the designed system can reconstruct a region of 20×40 mm2, up to the accuracy of micron order.

A Study on the Uncertainty of a Laser Triangulator Considering System Covariances

A laser triangulation system, which is composed of a camera and a laser, calculates distances between objects intersected by the laser plane. Even though there are commercial triangulation systems, developing a new system allows the design to be adapted to the needs, in addition to allowing dimensions or processing times to be optimized; however the disadvantage is that the real accuracy is not known. The aim of the research is to identify and discuss the relevance of the most significant error sources in laser triangulator systems, predicting their error contribution to the final joint measurement accuracy. Two main phases are considered in this study, namely the calibration and measurement processes. The main error sources are identified and characterized throughout both phases, and a synthetic error propagation methodology is proposed to study the measurement accuracy. As a novelty in uncertainty analysis, the present approach encompasses the covariances of correlated system variables, characterizing both phases for a laser triangulator. An experimental methodology is adopted to evaluate the measurement accuracy in a laser triangulator, comparing it with the values obtained with the synthetic error propagation methodology. The relevance of each error source is discussed, as well as the accuracy of the error propagation. A linearity value of 40 µm and maximum error of 0.6 mm are observed for a 100 mm measuring range, with the camera calibration phase being the main error contributor.