Development of a Wide Area 3D Scanning System with a Rotating Line Laser

In a 3D scanning system, using a camera and a line laser, it is critical to obtain the exact geometrical relationship between the camera and laser for precise 3D reconstruction. With existing depth cameras, it is difficult to scan a large object or multiple objects in a wide area because only a limited area can be scanned at a time. We developed a 3D scanning system with a rotating line laser and wide-angle camera for large-area reconstruction. To obtain 3D information of an object using a rotating line laser, we must be aware of the plane of the line laser with respect to the camera coordinates at every rotating angle. This is done by estimating the rotation axis during calibration and then by rotating the laser at a predefined angle. Therefore, accurate calibration is crucial for 3D reconstruction. In this study, we propose a calibration method to estimate the geometrical relationship between the rotation axis of the line laser and the camera. Using the proposed method, we could accurately estimate the center of a cone or cylinder shape generated while the line laser was rotating. A simulation study was conducted to evaluate the accuracy of the calibration. In the experiment, we compared the results of the 3D reconstruction using our system and a commercial depth camera. The results show that the precision of our system is approximately 65% higher for plane reconstruction, and the scanning quality is also much better than that of the depth camera.