High precision calibration of line structured light sensors based on linear transformation over triangular domain

With the advantages of easy data processing and fast measuring speed, line structured light sensors (LSLSs) have gained more and more applications. CCD camera is a core component of the sensor. The distortion of its lens will severely degrades the measuring accuracy. To enhance the measuring quality, a numerical calibration method is brought out that is based on linear transformation over triangular domain. Based on the pinhole imaging principle, a linear transformation model was established which is easy to compute the profile's world coordinates according to its pixel coordinates over each triangular domain. The triangle domains are achieved using Delaunary triangulation via the centers of target dots. The triangle number that each center point of the laser stripe locates is determined by T-search method. A linear approximation error model to the lens distortion is also established and the approximation errors are getting larger when the interval spacing of the calibration dots increases. Measuring results show that the relative error of this proposed method in horizontal and vertical direction can reach 0.0630% and 0.0802%, respectively. The calibration error grows with the increasing of the target's dot interval that corresponds with the trends of the linear approximation error. This further validates the proposed calibration method.