Portable digital 3-D imaging system for remote sites

A portable digital 3D imaging system based on laser triangulation was designed for the accurate documentation of environments and objects located in remote sites. Cultural heritage and industrial applications are among the best candidates to benefit from this new technology. This paper focuses on such aspects as the acquisition, display, calibration/verification, and especially on model building. These aspects were all optimized to create a versatile system that is truly portable, i.e. hand portable to a remote site. Emphasis is placed on accuracy verification and monitoring which are critical factors for obtaining high-quality reconstruction of 3D models from multiple range images. A summary of the experimental results acquired at a number of sites in Italy is presented in this paper.