3D optical whole-field range sensor: development of procedures for the automatic set-up of the measurement and the calibration of the system

In this paper, the procedures developed to enhance the flexibility and the robustness of an optical whole-field profilometer are presented, as well as the procedure for calibrating it. The system is based on active triangulation. In order to comply with a sufficiently wide typology of targets, three different techniques to perform light coding have been integrated. In order to guarantee a sufficient robustness and simplicity of use, the system has been equipped with a procedure for the automatic determination of the measurement parameters, both geometrical and optical. Good linearity has been observed, and an overall mean value of the measurement error equal to 40 /spl mu/m, with a variability of about /spl plusmn/15 /spl mu/m, corresponding to 0.06% of full scale have been estimated.