<title>Laser Rangefinder For Robot Control And Inspection</title>

Abstract

Three-dimensional surface point data is often useful for r000t control and inspection casks. Tne design of sensors for collecting this data involves many choices, with selections made on tne oasis of data rate, accuracy, field of view, safety, size, object properties, and the need for registered range and orightness data. A sensor has been designed with data rates of 30 kHz for orightness, 2 kHz for range in the scanning mode, and 250 Hz for range in tne random access mode. Range data accuracy is aoout .1A of tne field of view. The main components of the sensor are a low power laser (1 mW), a 1024 element COD linear array camera, a galvanometer scanner, and a special interface to a minicomputer. Alternative designs include stereo without using projected energy, white light projection, ultrasound, time-of-flignt measurements, multiple detectors, projecting planes versus oeams, two-dimensional array cameras and "position" sensors, and a variety of scanning mechanisms.