Sources of Errors in Structured Light 3D Scanners

Structured light scanners have been commercially available for over a decade and some commercial scanners are evaluated using one of two German guidelines – VDI/VDE 2634 parts 2 and/or 3. Several other research groups have developed physical artifacts that are agnostic to instrument construction and are purpose driven. The use of such guidelines and artifacts is not well understood for instruments which have a variety of sensor configurations and capabilities. It is also not clear if these guidelines/artifacts are sensitive to all the sources of errors that are present in these systems. In this context, this paper will describe the ongoing activities at NIST to study various sources of errors in structured light scanners with an objective of characterizing their performance.