Many experimental techniques and many commercial solutions have been proposed to realize non-contact 3D digitization of industrial objects. Unfortunately, the performances of active 3D scanners depend on the optical properties of the surface to digitize. That is why the results obtained by active 3D triangulation on specular or transparent surfaces are not as good as those obtained on diffuse surfaces. In this paper, we present the developments we have realized to address highly reflective metallic surfaces. These developments are based on the extension of a technique, called "Scanning from heating" and initially dedicated to glass material. In comparison to conventional active triangulation techniques that measure the reflection of visible radiation, we measure here the thermal emission of a surface, which is locally heated by a laser source. We describe in this paper the successive steps we have followed to adapt Scanning From Heating to metallic materials, to evaluate the performances and finally to develop an operational prototype.
['Olivier Aubreton', 'Alban Bajard', 'Benjamin Verney', 'Frédéric Truchetet']
Infrared system for 3D scanning of metallic surfaces