Design of 3D scanner for surface contour mapping by ultrasonic sensor

Surface mapping systems have attracted great attention due to their potential applications in many areas. In this paper, a simple 3D scanner based on ultrasonic sensor was designed for mapping a contour of object surface. The scanner using an SRF02 ultrasonic sensor, a microcontroller and radio frequency (RF) module to collect coordinates of object surface (point cloud), and sent data to computer. The point cloud collection process was performed by moving two ultrasonic sensors in y and x directions. Both sensors measure a distance from an object surface to a reference point of each sensor. The measurement results represent the point cloud of object surface and the data will be sent to computer via RF module. The point cloud then converted to 3D model using MATLAB. It was found that the object contours can be reconstructed very well by the developed 3D scanner system.