Calibration of double stripe 3D laser scanner systems using planarity and orthogonality constraints

In this study, 3D scanning systems that utilize a pair of laser stripes are studied. Three types of scanning systems are implemented to scan environments, rough surfaces of near planar objects and small 3D objects. These scanners make use of double laser stripes to minimize the undesired effect of occlusions. Calibration of these scanning systems is crucially important for the alignment of 3D points which are reconstructed from different stripes. In this paper, the main focus is on the calibration problem, following a treatment on the pre-processing of stripe projections using dynamic programming and localization of 2D image points with sub-pixel accuracy. The 3D points corresponding to laser stripes are used in an optimization procedure that imposes geometrical constraints such as coplanarities and orthogonalities. It is shown that, calibration procedure proposed here, significantly improves the alignment of 3D points scanned using two laser stripes.