Volume Measurement of Moving Irregular Objects Using Linear Laser and Camera

A non-contact volume measurement method for irregular objects is proposed in this paper based on 3D reconstruction technology, where a linear laser and a camera are used. The line-surface model of laser surface and feature points is first established in a camera coordinate system. The point cloud coordinates of measured object are calculated using the geometric measurement principle and transformed into the world coordinate system from the camera coordinate system. The differential object point cloud is obtained by subtracting the reconstructed model from the initial background model, and the object volume is calculated by integrating the differential depth point cloud data. To extract accurate center of light stripe, a fitting algorithm is proposed using the truncated gaussian distribution. The measurement error is less than 4.5% at the distance of 2 meters away from the measurement devices. The experimental results show that the proposed method can accurately reconstruct 3D objects and accurately measure the irregular objects volume.