Dynamic 3-D shape measurement method: A review

Three-dimensional (3-D) shape measurement for a dynamic object or process, whose height distributions is varying with the time, has been a hot topic in recent years due to its wide field of application. A number of techniques have been presented and in-depth studied. Among several non-contact 3-D shape measurements for a dynamic object or process, an optical 3-D measurement system, based on 2-D grating pattern projection and Fast Fourier transform (FFT) fringe analysis has been developed and widely used, due to its particularly merits of requesting a low-cost and easy-to-use equipments, recording the full-field information simultaneously, requiring only one frame of the deformed fringe pattern to reconstruct the height distribution with fast data processing. In this paper, after an overview of dynamic 3-D shape measurement techniques is presented, the basic principles and typical applications of this technique based on grating projected and fringe analysis, which attracts our attention and research effort in the past ten years, has been targeted as main objective to review. Finally, the high-definition real-time depth-mapping TV camera, a 2-D color imaging with high-resolution and depth sensing system, has been briefly restated as a good development trend of 3-D modeling, robotic and graphics animation. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.