A Simple and Inexpensive 3D Scanning of Remote Objects by Robot

Abstract

Accessing remote objects that might be hard for a human being to reach to has become feasible by the use of mobile robots, which can be equipped with numerous gadgets to facilitate the purpose of using this robot. Scanning a remote object to study it or build a model of it is one of the applications where such mobile robots can be used for. This research aims at providing a cheap and efficient robot that performs 3D scanning of remote objects in order to build a model at the controller’s station. The robot has its own obstacle avoidance and distance calculation mechanism, but it can also be remotely controlled. Images of the object are captured by two cameras; one normal camera and another Time-of-Flight dedicated camera for capturing the depth of the object. The collected fragments of the images collected by the scanning process are sent wirelessly and securely to the controller, where a CAD model is built of the scanned object’s received data. The application will be applied on Festo Robotino because of its movement that supports this job as it uses Swedish Wheel drive.