Triangulation based Laser Scanner

Sujay S Rakesh Kumar M Uday Kumar L

07D10040 07010040 07010031
Jyoti Swaroop Repaka
07010042

November 30, 2009

 Abstract

During the recent times, the need for contact free measurement for mathematical
representation of physical objects has been growing ranging from transferring
modeled clay or wood to a CAD model to analyzing competitors products, with
recent applications extending to the animation industry. But often they still
require complex and expensive equipment. Such equipment unfortunately is
too expensive to be afforded by the general public. Access to such scanning
techniques could prove to be a great boon to students and hobbyists whose
interests may concern reverse engineering a particular component or in modeling
a particular object.
With the increasing efficiency of hardware and software devices, alternative
low cost solutions are in great demand. Such solutions should not only be cheap,
they should also present a relative ease and simplicity in their assembly. In this
report, we propose such a low-cost system for 3d data acquisition and surface
registration. The scanner uses a reference surface that acts as the coordinate
system of the object. The object placed in front of the reference surface also acts
as a system of the reference surface, and both these surfaces, automatically come
together. A single-view image is obtained by sweeping a laser line over the object
while keeping the camera fixed and analyzing the acquired laser stripes. The line
and the camera can move independently, making it possible to conveniently scan
an object while viewing it from different views. The only hardware requirements
are a simple handheld point LASER, a glass rod (cylindrical lens) and a standard
camera.
Contents

1 Introduction 3

2 Structural Design 5

3 Experimental Procedure 7
3.1 Experimental Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.2 Initial Calibration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.3 The Scanning Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.4 Shape Fusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

4 Algorithms 10

5 Issues, Future work and Conclusions 13

1
List of Figures

1.1 Intersection of the illuminating laser beam and the rays projected
back . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

2.1 Laser Scanner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

3.1 Reference plane whose dimensions and coordinates are known. . 8

3.2 Scanning in process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

4.1 Laser triangulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

4.2 Surface Registration of two surfaces A and B . . . . . . . . . . . 12

2
Chapter 1

Introduction

Laser scanning has become widely popular with the advent of Reverse Engineer-
ing techniques in the field of manufacturing and rapid prototyping techniques.
Scanners which measure co-ordinates of physical objects by triangulating dif-
ferent light beams are well known since more than the past two decades. The
scanning process could be done using a myriad of techniques like structured
light, coded light, time of flight, etc. Laser range scanners are commonly used for
contactless measuring of surfaces and 3d scenes in a wide range of applications.
The field of application includes, areas like manufacturing, reverse engineering,
robotics, industrial design, medical diagnosis, archaeology, multimedia and web
design, as well as rapid prototyping and computer-aided quality control.
Most commercial laser scan systems use a camera and a laser beam or laser
plane. The measurement here is based on triangulation, i.e. the intersection of
the illuminating laser beam and the rays projected back to the camera as shown
in the Figure 1.
This is generally coupled with expensive high precision actuation, for ro-
tating/translating the laser plane the object. With recent advancements in
computational techniques, devices have been developed which avoid the use of
expensive actuators. These approaches have to determine the position and orien-
tation of the laser device on-line and to permanently avoid an external tracking
system. In place of an external tracking system, we propose a real-time self-
calibration of a hand-held laser plane, which is based on a simple analysis of the
laser stripes in the camera images. Thus, the laser line can be swept manually
over the object during the scan. This method has the following advantages:
1. Low cost
2. Flexibility

3. Simplicity in Design
This approach has been investigated by Lyubomir Zagorchev and Ardeshir
Goshtasby of the Wright state University[4]. They use a reference double-frame,
which is placed around the object and acts as calibration target. The approach,
involves calibration of the LASER using the four visual intersection points of the
laser and the double-frame. We could however make the calibration more flexible
by designing the process in such a way that the calibration target can be almost

3
Figure 1.1: Intersection of the illuminating laser beam and the rays projected
back

arbitrarily shaped (e.g. an arbitrary background). The laser calibration can be

made more robust and accurate, by using more than four points to calibrate
the laser, and rely on sub-pixel analysis of grayscale difference images. Due to
our subsequent fast surface registration, the object can be moved freely between
different scans thus, avoiding repositioning and recalibration of the camera to
get different viewing directions. A very popular surface registration approach
is the ICP. The algorithms used are discussed later.
In this report, a scanner mechanism is introduced that allows independent
movement of the camera and the laser projector during a scan, enabling the
user to deviate the output from a laser line generator. One view of an object
is obtained by fixing the camera and sweeping the laser over the object with
hand.[3, Page 718] The camera is then moved to scan the object from a different
view. A reference surface placed behind or in front of the object is used to
automatically calibrate the scanner and relate the coordinate system of the
camera to the coordinate system of the surface based n markers. The hardware
and the computational algorithms to be used are also discussed.

4
Chapter 2

Structural Design

The hardware organization of the scanner is depicted in Figure 2.1. The basic
design of this device is quite simple. The laser ray, expanded to a plane by a
cylindrical lens, has to intersect two things at the same time: the (unknown)
surface, and the a priori known reference geometry (usually the background).
The visible intersection with the background is used to calibrate the laser (cal-
culate the spatial orientation of the LASER plane). With this knowledge we
can triangulate new 3d point coordinates of the objects surface by intersecting
the laser plane with the projecting rays. Certainly, the camera must have been
calibrated so that its external and internal parameters are exactly known. Thus,
the exact coordinates of the background structure with respect to the camera
coordinate system are implicitly known.
As mentioned earlier, Scanning is done by sweeping the laser light over an
object by hand. In this manner, dense range data can be captured in some areas
while sparse data are captured in other areas. Effectively, the laser sweeping
process can be automated using a rotating mirror, a rotating arm, or a transla-
tion stage. The global reference for the computation is attached to the reference
surface, and as long as the position of the object remains fixed with respect to
the surface, object coordinates determined from different views will all be in

Figure 2.1: Laser Scanner

5
the same coordinate system and thus will automatically produce a unique set
of data pertaining to the object. The scanner, therefore, makes it possible to
combine different-view range images of an object without registering them.

6
Chapter 3

Experimental Procedure

3.1 Experimental Setup

For experimental evaluation, we used a grayscale CCD webcam, connected to a
standard Intel PC with 2.16GHz. The scanning accuracy naturally depends on
the exactness of the camera calibration, triangulation angle and the thickness
of the LASER plane. To evaluate the accuracy of our laser scanner, we have
scanned a well-known test object under a reasonable triangulation angle of about
0◦ − 30◦ , and a distance of 600mm to the camera. The scan result contains this
step within a tolerance of less than 0.4mm. The measured (unfiltered) depth
values of each surface are very accurate and show an RMS error of only 0.37mm.

3.2 Initial Calibration

As discussed earlier, the camera needs to be calibrated before any initial runs
in order to establish correspondence between image points and points in the
reference surface. It is required to determine the coordinates of the markers on
the frames in an acquired image. After a successful calibration, the co-ordinates
of the markers in the background are known exactly. In our experiment, the
markers are black circles and dots on a white background, as shown in Figure
3.1.
For more effective and faster calibration however, the markers may be made
of light-emitting diodes with distinct colors for the front and black frames to
make them more easily distinguishable in the images. The position and orien-
tation of the laser plane is determined in each image after the relation between
image points and points in the front and back frames are determined. Also,
the position and orientation of the camera is determined from the coordinates
of the markers, in the picture. Once the camera position and orientation, and
the equation of the laser plane are determined, the coordinates of points in the
scene can be determined from their images, based on the design described in
Chapter 2.
There are a few sources of error that could degrade the calibration process.
For instance, due to the digital nature of images and the presence of noise, the
center of a marker could be off by a pixel or two. The intersection of a laser plane
with the frame border could be displaced by a pixel due to the digital nature of

7
 Figure 3.1: Reference plane whose dimensions and coordinates are known.

images. Determination of camera position depends on the intersections of laser

lines with the frame borders; therefore, errors in determining the intersections
will carry over to errors in camera position, and errors in camera position directly
affect accuracy in computed co-ordinate values. The errors and ambiguities can
be reduced or removed by using very small LED markers, a brighter laser, a
darker environment lighting, and a higher resolution camera.

3.3 The Scanning Process

During the scanning process, the image and the ambient settings are made
very dark. Then the LASER plane is swept along the surface of the object,
up and down repeatedly. For effective rendering of the object, this sweeping
is to be done repeatedly, so that the data acquired is sufficient enough for the
interpolation. A picture of the object during the process of scanning is shown
in Figure 3.2.

3.4 Shape Fusion

Various algorithms are available for surface registration.
• It is based on the Iterative closest point (ICP) algorithm.[1]
• The ICP iteratively improves a good initial solution.
• The algorithm makes use of surface features like point signatures, surface
curves, spin-images, or salient-points.

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 Figure 3.2: Scanning in process

• Surface registration method is a significant improvement of the random

sample matching (matching fragments of broken objects without knowing
the initial solution).
• This method is based on the RANSAC (Random Sample Consensus)[2]
algorithm for fitting a model to experimental data.
The algorithm used is explained in brief later.

9
Chapter 4

Algorithms

In order for scanner to measure the co-ordinates of an object accurately, it is

necessary that we make the computer to get accustomed to a known surface,
from which all future calculations should be based. In many cases, a simple
background (e.g. the natural environment) can be used. Under the assumption
that the background geometry is known, we can obtain some point coordinates
of the visible laser line by intersecting background and the LASER plane. These
3-D intersection points constrain all degrees of the laser planes pose. Although
many background shapes are imaginable, we have used a technique, which in-
volved capturing the image of a paper with a print of the markers and stuck to
two mutually perpendicular surfaces. Details about this work are given in the
preceding paragraphs.
As shown in Figure 4.1., a camera image captures the 2D representation of
a 3D intersection points of the plane of Laser beam ELaser and the surface of
the object under scan p.
Suppose, I is the camera image of the scan with the object and IR is the
image without the laser of the background, then a difference in images Id can
be derived.
Id = I − IR (4.1)
We, then perform a 1D detection of the laser line in each row and column
of the image Id and get a Y (x) of the line r. This Y (x) is then used by the
RANSAC algorithm[2] to get a 3D map of the points under scan.
The algorithm in short is as follows:
3 close random points are selected on the differential image Y (x1 ),
Y (x2 ), and Y (x3 ). These are assumed to lie on a single plane. And
since the plane of the laser is known from the computation with the
background, we get the plane in which these 3 random points lie in.
Thus we can get the 3D coordinates of the 3 points p1 , p2 , p3 .

p = r ∩ ELaser (4.2)

where,
p is the surface plane of the object under scan.
r is the line laser image

10
 Figure 4.1: Laser triangulation

ELaser is the plane of the Laser beam.

Increasing the number of laser-sweeps increases the accuracy of the scan.
After all the 3D points have been collected in one direction, we proceed to scan
all other directions by rotating the object under scan. (0◦ , 90◦ , 180◦ , 270◦ ).
To get a full 360◦ model, scans from different directions have to be registered
together.
Scans from different directions can be registered together in the following
way.[3, Page 192]
Consider two scans A and B as in Figure 4.2 . Define a set of pose Hypothesis
for 2 sets A and B as:

H := {(a, b, c, d)|rel(a, c) = rel(b, d); a, c ∈ A; b, d ∈ B} (4.3)

where, rel(u, v) is defined as follows:

   
duv kpv − pu k
cos αuv   nu .puv 
rel(u, v) :=  cos βuv  := 
  
nv .puv 
δuv atan2(nu .(puv × nv ), (nu × puv ).(puv × nv ))
(4.4)
where,
duv is the Eculidean point distance.

αuv is the angle of inclination.

βuv is the angle between normals.

11
 Figure 4.2: Surface Registration of two surfaces A and B

δuv is the rotation angle.

After generating pose Hypothesis, we measure its matching quality. This is
done by a Monte-Carlo strategy using a sequence of random points in which the
proportion of overlapping area (Ω) is estimated.
A particular ε is defined (small-enough). And two points are said to coincide if
the distance between them is less than ε.
(
1 if distB (x) < ε
contactB (x) := (4.5)
0 else

with,
distB (x) = minkx −A TB (4.6)
y∈B

Then Ω, the proportion of overlapping area can be computed with 95% accuracy
as: Pn
contactB (xi ) 1.96
Ω = i=1 ± √ (4.7)
n 2 n

12
Chapter 5

Issues, Future work and

Conclusions

The major issues regarding the project areas follows-

1. Imperfections in the laser cheap lasers could have a significant divergence
in the laser beam

2. External optical disturbances - Light reflected from the environment could

cause a decrease in accuracy in surface registration.
3. The setup should not be disturbed during the scan as calibration would
be required for a new relative position of the camera.
4. Increase of thickness of the plane of line-laser may decrease the accuracy.

5. Laser-scanning is not suitable for objects with sharp edges.

On the contrary, the scanner does not require that the laser source and the
camera be fixed with respect to each other like in commercial LASER scanners.
The user may hold the laser line generator and sweep over the object to scan
it. If desired, the laser source may be translated or rotated automatically using
a translation stage or a rotating mirror. The scanning process is most effective
and computationally less intensive if the whole process is automated and made
hands free.
With an effective enough LASER and a better capturing techniques and
algorithms, even small shape details are acquired accurately and the accuracy
can reach values of up to 0.4 to 0.7mm!
To sum up the findings, the future prospects of this project can be:
1. Complete automation of the process using encoder based DC motor or
stepper actuator etc.
2. Dedicated thin and bright line laser with low divergence.

3. Explore the possibilities of converting the obtained scan from .obj file to
STL or VRML formats which could then be uploaded to a prototyping
machine.

13
 4. Include support sharp edges using white light scanning.
The hardware and computation involved in the design and working of the
LASER scanner were discussed. The scanner uses a reference surface to capture
images and computationally merge them.
Thus, we demonstrated a very effective but simple LASER scanner, with a
decent accuracy for most of the common purposes and sufficient to build up a
system for 360-object-reconstruction, which is on par with the other commer-
cially available, expensive techniques.

14
Bibliography

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Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence 14, 2 (1992),
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[2] Fischler, M. A., and Bolles, R. C. Random sample consensus: a
paradigm for model fitting with applications to image analysis and auto-
mated cartography. Commun. ACM 24, 6 (1981), 381–395.
[3] Simon, W., Sven, M., and Friedrich, M., W. Pattern Recognition.
Springer Berlin / Heidelberg, 2006.
[4] Zagorchev, L., and Goshtasby, A. A paintbrush laser range scanner.
Computer Vision and Image Understanding 101, 2 (2006), 65 – 86.

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