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.