Towards the Development of a Documentary Standard for Derived-Point to Derived-Point Distance Performance Evaluation of Spherical Coordinate 3D Imaging Systems

Published

October 30, 2015

Author(s)

Balasubramanian Muralikrishnan, Katharine M. Shilling, Prem K. Rachakonda, Wei Ren, Vincent D. Lee, Daniel S. Sawyer

Abstract

This paper describes ongoing research work within the Dimensional Metrology Group (DMG) at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in support of the development of a documentary standard for derived-point to derived-point distance performance evaluation of spherical coordinate 3D imaging systems (laser scanners). The proposed standard is being developed by the subcommittee E57.02 on Test Methods within the ASTM E57 committee on 3D Imaging Systems. The overall approach of the testing strategy is to compare derived-point to derived-point distances obtained by the instrument under test against those obtained by a reference instrument. A significant challenge in the development of a documentary standard for performance evaluation is the determination of suitable test positions and orientations that expose all known sources of error. In this paper, we describe a geometric error model and a sensitivity analysis based approach that facilitates the identification of sensitive test positions. In addition, we also briefly addresses other relevant aspects such as identifying suitable sphere targets that can be used for such testing, methods to process point cloud data to extract sphere centers, a method to determine reference distance between spheres along with its uncertainty, and issues involved in making conformance decisions.

Citation

Journal of Manufacturing Systems

Volume

37

Issue

2

Pub Type

Journals

Keywords

3D imaging systems, distance performance evaluation, laser scanner, sphere targets, spherical coordinate systems

Citation

Muralikrishnan, B. , Shilling, K. , Rachakonda, P. , Ren, W. , Lee, V. and Sawyer, D. (2015), Towards the Development of a Documentary Standard for Derived-Point to Derived-Point Distance Performance Evaluation of Spherical Coordinate 3D Imaging Systems, Journal of Manufacturing Systems (Accessed October 8, 2025)