A Mobile Robotic Measurement System for Large-scale Complex Components Based on Optical Scanning and Visual Tracking

Large-scale components with complex curved surfaces are the foundation of aerospace, energy, and transportation fields, while full-field 3D measurements along with accuracy analyses are critical to control manufacturing quality. Most of the existing measurement methodologies rely on manual inspection, and the accuracy and efficiency are unsatisfactory. This paper introduces an integrated mobile robotic measurement system for the accurate and automatic 3D measurement of large-scale components with complex curved surfaces. The measurement system is composed of a mobile manipulator, a fringe projection scanner and a stereo vision system, and it can provide accurate noncontact 3D measurements of large-scale complex components. By proposing a hand-eye calibration method and scanning pose tracking method based on a stereo vision system, the local point clouds obtained by scanning along with the movement of the mobile robot around the component can be accurately unified into a common reference frame. The proposed measuring system and method are verified by measuring and reconstructing the whole surface of a wind turbine blade model with a length of 2.8 m. The accuracy evaluation proves the effectiveness of the proposed system and method.