Comparative Study of Sensors Applied to a Three-Dimensional Scanner

A three-dimensional scanner obtains a digital model of any object in a detailed and fast way, its operation is based on the acquisition of distance measurements from a reference to each point of the object’s contour, which, when organized according to the reference system, form a cloud of three-dimensional points. In the present work, a comparative study between infrared and ultrasonic distance sensors is carried out to define its functionality as an active part of a three-dimensional scanner. It uses a mechanical structure with fixed base and ability to move the sensor in the x, y and z axes, the control is done with an arduino card and a visual interface in MatLab that allows the variation of the acquisition parameters to obtain quantitative data and visualize the three-dimensional point cloud. The infrared sensor obtains better results when acquiring the cloud of points of the contour of an object and using a fixed base structure with circular sweep.