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Automated Laser Scanning System For Reverse Engineering and Inspection
Automated Laser Scanning System For Reverse Engineering and Inspection
Received 30 August 2001; received in revised form 5 March 2002; accepted 6 March 2002
Abstract
Recently, laser scanners have been used more often for inspection and reverse engineering in industry, such as for motors,
electronic products, dies and molds. However, due to the lack of efficient scanning software, laser scanners are usually manually
operated. Therefore, the tasks that involve inspection and reverse engineering processes are very expensive. In this research, we
propose an automated measuring system for parts having a freeform surface. In order to automate a measuring process, appropriate
hardware system as well as software modules are required. The hardware system consists of a laser scanning device and setup
fixtures that can provide proper location and orientation for the part to be measured. The software modules generate optimal scan
plans so that the scanning operation can be performed accordingly. In the scan planning step, various scanning parameters are
considered in the generation of optimal scan paths, such as the view angle, depth of field, the length of the stripe, and occlusion.
In the scanning step, the generated scan plans are downloaded to the industrial laser scanner and the point data are captured
automatically. The measured point data sets are registered automatically and the quality of point data is evaluated by checking the
difference between the CAD model and the measured data. To demonstrate an automated measuring system, a motorized rotary
table with two degrees of freedom and a CNC-type laser scanner with four degrees of freedom are used. 2002 Elsevier Science
Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Automated scanning; Laser scanner; Optimal scan plan; Reverse engineering
0890-6955/02/$ - see front matter 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 8 9 0 - 6 9 5 5 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 0 3 0 - 5
890 S. Son et al. / International Journal of Machine Tools & Manufacture 42 (2002) 889897
view (FOV), and self-occlusion [4,5,6,16]. It takes much distance cannot be changed by an operator. Since a laser
time and cost due to trial and errors when the parts are scanner consists of optical sensors and mechanical mov-
scanned manually. In order to resolve this problem, an ing parts, various constraints must be satisfied when
automated measuring system, in which scan plan gener- measuring a certain point on a part (Fig. 2). The goal of
ation and scanning are performed automatically, is this section is to generate an optimal scan plan that satis-
needed [9,10,17]. Moreover, for scanning the reflective fies the following major constraints [6]:
or transparent materials, preprocessing with a proper
spray is required. 1. View angle: the angle between the incident laser
In this research, an automated scanning system for beam and the surface normal of a point being meas-
reverse engineering and inspection of a freeform surface ured should be less than the maximum view angle g
is developed. The system can generate an optimal scan
plan, which includes the number of required scans, the diNicos(g),
scan directions, and the scan paths considering various where
parameters of the equipment. In order to implement an
automated system, automated part setup is necessary, LPi
di .
and a motorized rotary table is used for this purpose. |LPi|
Upon measuring, the axes of the rotary table are known,
and the table is automatically rotated to orient the part 2. FOV: the measured point should be located within the
exactly. The generated scan paths are then downloaded length of a laser stripe
to the laser scanner and the scanning operation is perfor-
med. The captured point data is registered automatically
and the quality of the point data is analyzed.
(di)Bicos d
2
,
2.2. The scope of research the field of view of the laser scanner and part orientation.
However, the system focused on the parts with primi-
The final goal of this research is to scan a part with tive features.
freeform surfaces automatically with minimum human Bernard and Veron [5] developed a new method that
interaction. The whole process consists of three parts: automatically can scan a part using off-line program-
scan plan generation; scanning; and registration/analysis. ming of the CMM. To facilitate the data acquisition pro-
In the scan plan generation step, the optimal scan plan cess, a software module called the Paint was used to
is calculated considering various measuring constraints. find the illuminated region by the laser beam. The sys-
The scan plan includes the number of required scans, the tem, however, needed to be improved in terms of its
scan directions, and the scan paths [11,12]. In this scanning efficiency for a complex part.
research, it is assumed that the CAD model of the part Zussman et al. [6,7] developed an algorithm that
is available. For calculating the optimal scan, we propose determined the location of a laser sensor. But their algor-
algorithms using the methods of estimation and modifi- ithm was only applicable to a 2D profile of a surface
cation. and could not be used to scan an entire surface of an
In order to scan the part along the generated scan plan, object. Elber and Zussman [8] developed an algorithm
problems with the part setup and the coordinate trans- that can calculate the number of scans and corresponding
formation of the scan paths should be investigated. For optimal scanning directions for a part with a freeform
scanning, the part is setup using a motorized rotary table surface using a surface decomposition method. They
with two axes, and the coordinate transformation is done
only considered the angle between the surface normal
by a combination of the translation and rotation matrices.
and the incident beam in determining the scannability of
After the calculated scan paths are downloaded to the
a point on a surface, and did not consider other con-
scanner, scanning of the part performed.
straints.
After scanning is completed, the acquired data from
CMMs have been widely used in industrial appli-
different scan directions should be combined in one
coordinate system, which is called registration [2,14,15]. cations and some parts of the measuring processes are
Conventional registration method of using features such similar to that of laser scanners. Among many research
as balls (or spheres) is very time consuming. In this activities, some notable works are described below. Yau
research, registration is done automatically using the and Menq [9] and Lim and Menq [10] developed an
rotation angles of the rotary table. Finally, by calculating automated CMM path planning system for the inspection
differences between the CAD model and the scanned of a complex part. The system gave collision-free
data, the quality of the scanned data is verified. inspection paths for dies and molds. After the initial scan
Fig. 3 shows the overall procedure of the proposed path generation, the inspection plans were simulated in
automated measuring system. The details of each part a CATIA robotics module using the Verify program.
are explained in later sections. The inspection of a manufactured part can be planned
in the CAD/CAM environment and executed by the
2.3. Previous research CMMs in the shop floor automatically.
Spitz et al. [11] introduced the notions of accessibility
Although laser scanners have been widely used in and approachability, and described two sets of algor-
recent years, there exist few researches related to laser ithms for computing accessibility information. One
scanning. Some research works related to laser scanning algorithm performed exact computation on polyhedral
are briefly summarized next. object and was relatively slow, whereas the other used
Xi and Shu [4] developed a CAD-based path planning discrete approximation for increasing the speed. The
system for a 3D line laser scanner. They tried to maxim- discretized algorithm has been tested on real-world parts.
ize the coverage of the part by finding the best setup for
3. Scan plan generation deviation in their normal vectors than the view angle are
grouped. The number of groups represents the required
3.1. Overall procedure number of scan directions.
The next step is to calculate the initial scan directions
For a scan plan generation, a complex part must be based on the groups of critical point. First, the maximum
segmented into functional surfaces and the scan plan will deviation points, C11 and C21, those that have the
be generated for each surface path. Instead of dealing maximum angle deviation in their normal vectors, are
with the entire surface, the surface is approximated by determined among the critical points (Fig. 5). Each
a point set sampled from the surface, and scanning of region grows by finding all the sampling points whose
all sampled points by the minimum number of scans is normal vector has an angle deviation smaller than the
the final goal of this algorithm. Using the sampled user-defined angle with respect to the maximum devi-
points, pairs of points that cannot be scanned together ation point. This angle should be chosen considering the
are obtained and are used for estimating the necessary trade-off between the sizes of the regions and the quality
number of scans by considering the view angle con- of the scanned data. Finally, the global mean of all the
straint. The intial scan plan, including the scan directions normal vectors at the points in the group is determined
and scan paths for each scan direction, is generated, then as an initial scan direction. That is, the initial scan direc-
the DOF and occlusion constraints are tested. If some tion is represented by
points cannot be scanned, an additional direction or a
n
modified direction is calculated according to the geo- Initial scan direction ISDi Dj / ni
metric shape. For these new directions, the same pro- j1
cedures are repeated until a final scan plan is generated.
Fig. 4 shows the overall procedure for the generation of where Dj is the unit normal vector of each sampling
a scan plan. point and ni is the number of points in region i.
In general, the best scanning data is obtained when
3.2. Determination of the initial scan direction the scan direction and the surface normal vectors are par-
allel to each other. The global mean direction minimizes
Since the number of sampled points affects the feasi- the angle difference between the scan direction and sur-
bility of a scan plan, a proper number of points should face normals, such that it can be considered as the best
be sampled. The distance between neighboring points is initial scan direction. The concept of determination of
used as the criterion in the algorithm. That is, the dis- initial scan direciton is illustrated in Fig. 5.
tance between neighboring sampled points must be less
than the length of a laser stripe. 3.3. Scan path generation
In order to scan two points in the same scan, the angle
between the normal vectors of the two points should be The scan path is the collection of line segments that
less than two times the view angle. The points that do guide the laser probe during scanning. The scan path of
not satisfy the constraint are referred to as critical points. the laser scanner used in this research consists of a
Since the existence of critical points means that the sur- sequence ID, a starting point, and an ending point. Gen-
face cannot be scanned at one time, the required number erally, high scannability depends on the length of the
of scans is estimated based upon the critical points. After scan path, the number of scan paths, and the number of
finding all critical points, those that have a lower angle setup changes. In this algorithm, the length of the total
Fig. 4. Overall procedure for the generation of a scan plan. Fig. 5. Conceptual drawing for generating an initial scan direction.
S. Son et al. / International Journal of Machine Tools & Manufacture 42 (2002) 889897 893
Fig. 7. Modifying scan direction (a) due to a DOF problem and (b) due to an occlusion problem.
894 S. Son et al. / International Journal of Machine Tools & Manufacture 42 (2002) 889897
Table 1
Specifications of the 3D laser scanner (SURVEYOR Model 2030,
Laser Design, Inc.)
Parameters Values
Fig. 8. The laser scanning system. Fig. 10. Setup of a fixture and a rotary table.
S. Son et al. / International Journal of Machine Tools & Manufacture 42 (2002) 889897 895
(Fig. 11). In order to interface different systems, coordi- ner uses a 15 mm-wide semiconductor laser probe and
nate transformation is required. For the transformation, it can capture 240 points for each scan. The test part was
the angle of rotation for each axis and the translation scanned in two directions and the total scanning time
value used for the coordinate transformation are calcu- took about 10 min, with 0.5 mm steps.
lated from the scan direction determined in Section 3.2 After scanning the whole surface, the scanned point
and the measured information in Section 4.1. data must be registered under one coordinate frame to
The coordinate transformation matrix is as follows reconstruct the whole surface model. This process can
[18]: be performed automatically because the axis information
is already known. As such, an automated registration
[M] [T]Rotary
Model
table
[R]qX-axis[R]fY-axis
process can save much time by preventing it from tedi-
where the matrix [T]Rotary
Model
table
translates the scan paths ous data processing work. However, because the size of
from the model axis to the axis of the rotary table and acquired point data is very large, it is necessary to reduce
the matrix [R]qX axis rotates the scan paths by q along it before further surface modeling and NC code gener-
the x-axis. ation (Fig. 13).
Therefore, the final scan paths can be calculated using
the matrix [M], and the matrix form of the transform- 4.4. Analysis of scanning data
ation is as follows:
The scanned point data usually includes errors from
[Final scan paths] [Scan paths]Model[M]
the moving system, the sensor and the positioning sys-
where the matrix [Scan paths]Model is the generated scan tem. Errors are usually visualized using the changes of
paths in the scan path generation module. Consequently, curvatures and normal vectors of the fitted surface [13].
the final scan paths, which are downloaded into the laser In order to verify the accuracy of the laser scanning
scanning system, are prepared. system and the registration process, the deviation
between the nominal CAD model and the measured
4.3. Automated scanning and registration point data at each point is directly calculated. The devi-
ation map gives a clear measuring error range for the
Most measuring systems have their own scanning part.
software and file format. It is therefore necessary to In order to analyze the quality of the measured point
translate the scanning plan into a specific file format that data, a data localization process has to be performed.
the scanning system can read. The laser scanner used in Data localization places a measured point data in the
this study is operated by a proprietary software package same reference as the CAD model. The concept of data
called DataSculpt and, therefore, the generated plan is localization is shown in Fig. 14. Typically the measured
translated into the SCN binary file format [19]. data are moved to a target geometry or CAD model via
The scan plan is generated using the scan path gener- different types of data fitting methods such as the 3-2-
ation module explained in Section 3.3. Fig. 12(a) shows 1 fitting, the least square fitting, or the minmax fitting
the surface model of the test part and Fig. 12(b) shows [14,15]. The selection of the data localization method
the generated scan directions and paths graphically. Fig. depends on the shape of part and the required tolerance.
12(c) shows the screen dump of the generated scan plan In this system, the data localization process is perfor-
and this scan plan is translated and downloaded into the med automatically using the coordinate transformation
scanning system. method explained in Section 4.2 because the axis
After downloading the translated scan plan into the relationship between the measured data and the CAD
laser scanning system, an automated scanning operation model is already calculated. Fig. 15 shows the result of
of the test part is performed. The upper surface of the data localization between the measured point data and
test part is sprayed with the white powder to prevent the upper surface of the test part. In the figure, the curve-
unexpected reflection of the laser beam. The laser scan- net model is designed in the CAD system and the point
data is scanned by the laser scanner.
The measuring error is estimated using the surface-
cloud difference [20]. The results of error estimation are
shown in Table 2. There were few points which have a
big deviation from the surface model. Therefore, it can
be expected that the average deviation and standard devi-
ation will be relatively very small. Those points, which
have big deviations, are easily removed by using a col-
ored deviation map and it improves the quality of the
measured data.
Fig. 11. Coordinate transformation. Final error is the addition of all the error sources from
896 S. Son et al. / International Journal of Machine Tools & Manufacture 42 (2002) 889897
Fig. 12. Generated scan plan: (a) the surface model with normals; (b) scan directions; and paths (c) screen dump of scan path.
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