Obtaining four-dimensional vibration information for vibrating surfaces with a Kinect sensor

•Full-field acquisition of vibration data (million scale) with a low cost device.•Real-time obtaining and recording 4D vibration information (in space time).•Marker-free and non-contact vibration measurements.•Contrastive amplitude error ranges within 0.6 mm when the frequency is below 15 Hz.•Accurately and easily diagnosing damages of structure with low natural frequency.

In this paper, we present a real-time approach to obtain four-dimensional (4D) information from the surfaces of low-frequency vibrating rigid objects using a Kinect sensor. This consumer-grade range sensing technology is used for markerless tracking on the three-dimensional (3D) coordinate points of object surfaces. The time coordinates are simultaneously defined by the sampling interval converted from the frame rate of 30 frames per second (fps). Then the 4D (defined in the space time) vibration information can be recorded in the form of (x, y, z, t), enabling researchers to investigate the dynamic features of object surfaces efficiently. A comparison of the measurement accuracy and efficiency of a Kinect sensor, a stereo vision system and a contact sensor is carried out. The results confirm the superiority of our approach in efficient measurement and demonstrate that the contrastive amplitude error ranges within 0.6 mm when the frequency is not beyond 15 Hz.