System for measuring shapes and dimensions of gaps and flushnesses on three dimensional surfaces of objects

Patent 5129010 Issued on July 7, 1992. Estimated Expiration Date:

June 15, 2010. Estimated Expiration Date is calculated based on simple USPTO term provisions. It does not account for terminal disclaimers, term adjustments, failure to pay maintenance fees, or other factors which might affect the term of a patent.

Abstract Claims Description Full Text

Patent References

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Inventors

Assignee

Kabushiki Kaisha Toyota Chuo Kenkyusho

Application

No. 538525 filed on 06/15/1990

US Classes:

382/154, 3-D or stereo imaging analysis348/136, Projected scale on object356/606, Line of light projected382/141Manufacturing or product inspection

Examiners

Primary: Boudreau, Leo H.
Assistant: Stellrecht, Barry

Attorney, Agent or Firm

Oblon, Spivak, McClelland, Maier & Neustadt

International Class

G06K 009/00

Foreign Application Priority Data

1989-12-15 JP

Abstract

A system for measuring three-dimensional shapes and dimensions includes: an imaging unit which faces an object with shape changes on the surface and images by means of a TV camera the slit line formed on the object surface by projecting slit light from a slit light source at a fixed angle; and a surface feature extraction member for extracting features representing the shape changes of the object surface, based on the changes of the XYZ coordinate values of the object surface detected by triangulation based on the centroid position of the intensity distribution of the slit line image corresponding to the scanning lines from the TV camera. Based on features thus extracted, the surface shape of the object can be measured rapidly with high precision.