Calibration of Laser Triangulating Cameras in Small Fields of View

Abstract: A laser triangulating camera system projects a laser line onto an object to create height curveson the object surface. By moving the object, height curves from different parts of the objectcan be observed and combined to produce a three dimensional representation of the object.The calibration of such a camera system involves transforming received data to get real worldmeasurements instead of pixel based measurements. The calibration method presented in this thesis focuses specifically on small fields ofview. The goal is to provide an easy to use and robust calibration method that can complementalready existing calibration methods. The tool should get as good measurementsin metric units as possible, while still keeping complexity and production costs of the calibrationobject low. The implementation uses only data from the laser plane itself making itusable also in environments where no external light exist. The proposed implementation utilises a complete scan of a three dimensional calibrationobject and returns a calibration for three dimensions. The results of the calibration havebeen evaluated against synthetic and real data.