Development of 3D scanner based on laser structured-light image

This paper addresses the development of 3D data acquisition system (3D scanner) based laser structured-light image. The 3D scanner consists of a stripe laser generator, a conventional camera, and a rotation table. The stripe laser onto an object has distortion according to 3D shape of an object. By analyzing the distortion of the laser stripe in a camera image, the scanner obtains a group of 3D point data of the object. A simple semiconductor stripe laser diode is adopted instead of an expensive LCD projector for complex structured-light pattern. The camera has an optical filter to remove illumination noise and improve the performance of the distance measurement. Experimental results show the 3D data acquisition performance of the scanner with less than 0.2 mm measurement error in 2 minutes. It is possible to reconstruct a 3D shape of an object and to reproduce the object by a commercially available 3D printer.