Data fusion between a 2D laser profile sensor and a camera

This paper describes a color extension of a 2D laser profile sensor by extracting the corresponding color from a camera image. For these purpose, we developed a routine for an extrinsic calibration between the profile sensor and the camera. Based on the resulting translation and rotation vectors a belonging pixel can be calculated for each profile point. Consequently, the color for each profile point can be extracted from the image. This approach is used to extend the geometric data of a robotic based 3D scanning system by color data.