Development and calibration of an integrated 3D scanning system for high-accuracy large-scale metrology

• A high-accuracy, low-cost 3D scanning system by integrating industrial robot with precise linear rail and laser sensor.
• A sphere-based algorithm for rail orientation calibration is introduced.
• Taking the robot positioning error into consideration, an enhanced hand–eye calibration method is proposed.
• Validation experiments were performed.

Quality control in advanced manufacturing requires automated and high-accuracy large-scale 3D measurement. This paper proposes a high-accuracy, low-cost 3D scanning system by integrating industrial robot with precise linear rail and laser sensor. The measuring principle and system construction of the integrated system are introduced in detail. A mathematical model is established for mapping the change of the laser sensor frame while it scans along the linear rail and a sphere-based algorithm for rail orientation calibration is introduced. Subsequently, taking the robot positioning error into consideration, an enhanced hand–eye calibration method is proposed to determine the relationship between robot end-effector and rail scanning frame. Validation experiments were performed, a maximum distance error of 0.071 mm was detected within the rail range and a mean/maximum distance error of 0.309/0.604 mm was detected in the robot volume. A large-scale scanning instance also shows that integrated robotic scanning system features high-efficiency and high-accuracy.