Calibration of laser scanning system based on a 2D ball plate

The development of manufacture industry requires improving the accuracy of laser scanning systems. Error calibration and correction can meet this need. In this paper, a two-dimensional (2D) ball plate method is proposed to calibrate the laser scanning system. This ball plate consists of a steel plate and a ball array with nine steel balls. The distances between the balls are used as basic reference to calibrate the system. The ball plate is designed to ensure its accuracy one order of magnitude greater than the system. An optimization model is developed to find the center coordinates of each ball target by fitting a sphere to its scanned data. This method does not require expensive instruments or devices. It is simpler and easier to use at low cost. An actual calibration is completed and the calibrated errors are used to correct the scanned point-cloud of a reactor. Experimental results show that the reactor reconstruction error is greatly reduced by correction. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.