Design and development of a low-cost laser range sensor

ABSTRACT

Active 3D vision is concerned with extracting 3D information from the visible surfaces of the scene. With the use of recent technological advances made in electronics, photonics and computer vision, it is now possible to develop a reliable, high-resolution and accurate 3D active range sensor. In this paper, first we present the development of Laser range sensor using only consumer-grade technologies to ensure affordable hardware cost and high angular resolution. In the designed Laser range sensor, a diode Laser projects the Laser line on the surface through a cylindrical lens while the camera captures the Laser line profile. Next, a new calibration technique of the range sensor is presented to acquire the range information based on relative pose between the Laser and the camera by taking single view of the scene. Experiments are carried out on real scene and efficient 3D reconstructed model of the objects has been obtained.

KEYWORDS:

• Active vision
• electro-mechanical devices
• laser range sensor
• optical triangulation
• camera calibration
• 3D Reconstruction

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Mahesh K. Singh is a research scholar in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Indian Institute Of Technology, Kanpur, India. His research interest includes Machine Vision, Robotics, Image processing and Computer Vision.

K. S. Venkatesh received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute Of Technology, Kanpur, India. He is a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. His current research interest includes Signal processing, Image and Video processing, Computer vision with applications in Robotics, Signal and System Theory.

Ashish Dutta obtained his Ph.D. in Systems Engineering from Akita University, Japan. From 1994 to 2000, he was with the Bhabha Atomic Research Center (India) where he worked on telemanipulator design and control for nuclear applications. Since 2002, he has been with the department of mechanical engineering in the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India. He was also an assistant professor in Nagoya University, Japan from 2006 to 2007 in the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering. His research interests are in the areas of humanoid robotics, micro-sensors and actuators, intelligent control systems and rehabilitation engineering.

ORCID

Mahesh K. Singh http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7142-6207

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by TCS Research Scholarship Scheme under project number TCS/CS/20110191.