Flying spot laser triangulation scanner using lateral synchronization for surface profile precision measurement.

High-speed surface profile measurement with high precision is crucial for target inspection and quality control. In this study, a laser scanner based on a single point laser triangulation displacement sensor and a high-speed rotating polygon mirror is proposed. The autosynchronized scanning scheme is introduced to alleviate the trade-off between the field of view and the range precision, which is the inherent deficiency of the conventional triangulation. The lateral synchronized flying spot technology has excellent characteristics, such as programmable and larger field of view, high immunity to ambient light or secondary reflections, high optical signal-to-noise ratio, and minimum shadow effect. Owing to automatic point-to-point laser power control, high accuracy and superior data quality are possible when measuring objects featuring varying surface characteristics even in demanding applications. The proposed laser triangulation scanner is validated using a laboratory-built prototype and practical considerations for design and implementation of the system are described, including speckle noise reduction method and real-time signal processing. A method for rapid and accurate calibration of the laser triangulation scanner using lookup tables is also devised, and the system calibration accuracy is generally smaller than ±0.025  mm. Experimental results are presented and show a broad application prospect for fast surface profile precision measurement.