3D reconstruction of material transportation status on belt conveyors

Real timely, intuitively monitoring the transportation status of material flow is a fundamental basis on belt conveyor speed control operation. To improve the detection precision and visualization degree, the article presents a method on 3D reconstruction of material transportation status on belt conveyor. A Laser Scanner LMS291-S05 is used to acquire a serials of 2D contour lines in real time, combined with velocity sensors to match the third coordinate of the 2D contour lines, making 3D points cloud data of the contour of material flow obtained. Based on Visual C++ 6.0 and OpenGL, Delaunay triangulation mesh is adopted to 3D reconstruct the points cloud. Applying the system to monitor the transportation status of hematite ore running at a constant speed on belt conveyor, the result shows that the method can effectively reconstruct the acquired data and obtain the 3D model of material flow, providing important data for reducing energy consumption in belt conveyor speed control strategy.