High speed and continuous 3-D measurement system

A new system for high speed and continuous 3-D measurement is presented. It is based on the slit-ray projection method. Remarkable features of the system-high speed and continuous measurement-mainly result from its image plane constructed by a PSD array which is horizontally non-divided and linear, but vertically divided in numbers. All row PSD elements are attached to respective analog signal processors; analog signals are digitized through A/D converters and stored in memory elements in order. By the virtue of this image plane configuration basic data for 3-D measurement are acquired during only one scanning of the slit-ray at high speed in the form of addresses of the memory elements and data stored in them. Moreover, using large capacity and/or dual port memories, one may continuously obtain 3-D range data of as many scenes as one wants. A trial system has been implemented using a newly designed PSD array of 128 channels and it has verified the method, obtaining 3-D range data at video rates continuously in an accuracy within ±0.3%