Three-dimensional measurement of distant objects based on laser-projected CCD images

A novel measuring system based on a single CCD camera and two laser projectors to record images and perform three-dimensional measurement of a distant object is proposed here. Because of the alignment of the laser beams which form in parallel with the optical axis of the CCD camera, projected spots will appear on the same scan line in a CCD image. As a result processing of a single scan line rather than the whole image is only required to identify the projected spots in the CCD image. Complex computation of video signals of the whole image via either pattern recognition or image analysis methods is therefore circumvented. On the basic of an established relationship between the distance and pixel counts between the projected spots in the CCD image, the proposed system not only measures the distance from a distant object but also the length of two arbitrarily designated points on the object. To provide better accuracy, intrinsic parameters of the CCD camera are taken into consideration in the measurement. Furthermore, the effect of laser diffusion is also proved to be irrelevant to the measuring accuracy here. Experimental results have demonstrated that the proposed measuring method is capable of yielding accurate results of three-dimensional measurement for a distant object in a very responsive way.