HiPER 3-D: An omnidirectional sensor for high precision environmental 3-D reconstruction

The environmental 3-D reconstruction is a strategic task in many contexts, above all, in infrastructure inspection and vehicle/robot automatic motion. In this paper, we present a patented sensor capable to recover 3-D data with a very high profile acquisition rate and perform an omnidirectional highly accurate environmental reconstruction: these skills are allowed by a profilometric laser approach coupled to a catadioptric system. After a presentation of the sensor's functionality, its sensitivity is theoretically analyzed both in terms of maximum and medium error. This, not only for proving the sensor's accuracy (which, anyway, has been also experimentally tested), but also for defining a design strategy which optimally sets up its geometrical parameters. Performance of a prototypal implementation of the sensor, as well as a calibration technique, are presented, and several indoor and outdoor 3-D reconstructions are shown. © 2011 IEEE.