A vision measurement model of laser displacement sensor and its calibration method

•We propose a vision measurement model of laser displacement sensors which is more comprehensive and avoids linear approximation.•We introduce a corresponding calibration method of the vision measurement model of laser displacement sensors.•The calibration method is feasible and can achieve a calibration accuracy of 0.026 mm.

Laser displacement sensors (LDSs) use a triangulation measurement model in general. However, the non-linearity of the triangulation measurement model influences the measurement accuracy of the LDS, and the geometric parameters calibration process of the components of the LDS is tedious. In this paper, we present a vision measurement model of the LDS based on the perspective projection principle. Furthermore, a corresponding calibration method is proposed. A planar target with featured lines is moved by a 2D moving platform to some preset known positions. At each position, the world coordinates of calibration points are obtained by the cross ratio invariance principle and the linear array camera of the LDS is used for collecting target images. The simulations verify the effectiveness of the proposed model and the feasibility of the calibration method. The experimental results indicate that the calibration method achieves a calibration accuracy of 0.026 mm. Compared with the traditional measurement model, the vision measurement model of the LDS is more comprehensive and avoids a linear approximation procedure, and the corresponding calibration method is easily complemented.