Design and Calibration of Real-Time 3D Coordinate Measurement System Based on Multi-Angle Intersection and Cylindrical Imaging

Abstract

This paper presents a high-resolution real-time 3D coordinate measurement system based on multi-angle intersection and cylindrical imaging. The measuring angle is detected by the linear camera equipped with cylindrical lenses, whose field of view is a 3D space rather than 2D plane. This camera has prominent advantages in precise coordinate measurement and dynamic position tracking due to the high resolution and outstanding frame rate of linear CCD. Each camera is a 1D angle measuring unit which confirms an angle thereby a plane passing through the light spot. With three cameras arrangement in front of the measurement field, the 3D coordinate of the light spot can be reconstructed by multi-angle intersection. An accurate and generic calibration method is introduced to calibrate this camera. The proposed calibration method is based on nonparametric ideas to find the mapping from incoming scene rays to photo-sensitive elements, and this method (black box calibration) is still effective even if the lens distortion is high and asymmetric. It is applicable to a central (single viewpoint) camera equipped with any lenses. The proposed calibration method is applied to the 3D coordinate measurement system. The coordinate measurement accuracy of the designed system is better than 0.49mm.