Construction and calibration of a low-cost 3D laser scanner with 360° field of view for mobile robots

Navigation of many mobile robots relies on environmental information obtained from three-dimensional (3D) laser scanners. This paper presents a new 360° field-of-view 3D laser scanner for mobile robots that avoids the high cost of commercial devices. The 3D scanner is based on spinning a Hokuyo UTM-30LX-EX two-dimensional (2D) rangefinder around its optical center. The proposed design profits from lessons learned with the development of a previous 3D scanner with pitching motion. Intrinsic calibration of the new device has been performed to obtain both temporal and geometric parameters. The paper also shows the integration of the 3D device in the outdoor mobile robot Andabata.