Multiple-sensor integration for rapid and high-precision coordinate metrology

The development of a multiple-sensor coordinate measuring system (CMM) is introduced and its applications to automated part localization and rapid surface digitization are experimentally demonstrated. The developed multiple-sensor CMM is characterized by an integrated use of a high-precision CMM equipped with a motorized touch probe, and a 3D active vision system, advanced computational software, and the associated electronics. The 3D active vision system is capable of digitizing surface coordinates of objects having multiple features; thus intelligent feature recognition algorithms can be applied to extract the global surface information of the object. The obtained information can be subsequently used to automatically guide the touch probe for rapid coordinate data acquisition and to strategically control the coordinate measuring machine for high precision sampling of critical surface area. In this paper, the information automation for the multiple-sensor integrated system is demonstrated in part localization