The design of a laser range imaging device

In this thesis, a methodology and techniques for the design of a laser range imaging device (LRID) for robotic applications are presented. Furthermore, a prototype incorporating the concepts presented has been successfully tested in the laboratory. In this LRID, the range is determined by the shift in phase in the return of a modulated laser beam illuminating an object. The device is designed using a low power and visible (for laboratory safety reasons) diode laser and an APD detector. The device is also equipped with a fully programmable X-Y galvonometric scanning unit. The scene, which can be dark as well as brightly lit, is scanned in either a vector or raster mode and both range and reflected intensity data are collected. In addition to typical range data applications, the range and intensity images can be combined to provide useful data sets to aid in object recognition and scene understanding