Design and Calibration of a Fast 3D Scanning LADAR

A fast 3D scanning laser radar is designed and calibrated. A set of mechanical equipment driven by a step motor is designed to rotate the scanning plane of a 2D laser range finder to realize 3D scanning. A micro-controller system is embedded for the scanning control and synchronization with the host computer. Measurement data are acquired by a self-developed high-speed data transmission board. Besides the inherent measurement error of the 2D laser range finder, the error of the resulting 3D LADAR system is mainly caused by two reasons: 1) the unknown offset between the axis of the pitching motion and the actual origin of the 2D laser range finder; 2) the initial attitude error. Based on the system measurement model, a least sum of squared error method is adopted to calibrate the system. The experimental results show that the resulting system has high scanning speed, high data accuracy and therefore is a cost effective means to acquire high quality 3D data