Design and development of a low-cost laser range sensor

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.