An Industrial Robot and a Laser Scanner as a Flexible Solution Towards an Automatic System for Reverse Engineering of Unknown Objects

Reverse Engineering (RE) is concerned with the problem of creating CAD-models of real objects by measuring point data from their surfaces. Current solutions either require manual interaction or expect the nature of the objects to be known. In order to create a fully automatic system for Reverse Engineering of unknown objects the software that creates the CAD-model must be able to control the operation of the measuring system. This paper presents a real implementation of a measuring system suited for that purpose. The experimental setup is based on an industrial robot with a laser scanner mounted at the tool-mounting flange. The key component of the system is a programable CAD-system. The CAD system is used to simulate and control the movement of the robot, as well as collecting the data acquired from both the laser scanner and from the robot’s positional system.