This paper gives an overview of the research and development activities in 3D surface digitizing and modeling conducted at the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) of Taiwan in the past decade. As a major technology and consulting service provider of the area, ITRI has developed 3D laser scanning digitizers ranging from low-cost compacts, industrial CAD/CAM digitizing, to large human body scanner, with in-house 3D surface modeling software to provide total solution in reverse engineering that requires processing capabilities of large number of 3D data. Based on both hardware and software technologies in scanning, merging, registration, surface fitting, reconstruction, and compression, ITRI is now exploring innovative methodologies that provide higher performances, including hardware-based correlation algorithms with advanced camera designs, animation surface model reconstruction, and optical tracking for motion capture. It is expected that the need for easy and fast high-quality 3D information in the near future will grow exponentially, at the same amazing rate as the internet and the human desire for realistic and natural images.

Date Published: 28 June 2000
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 4080, Input/Output and Imaging Technolgies II, (28 June 2000); doi: 10.1117/12.389439

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 4080:
Input/Output and Imaging Technolgies II
Yung-Sheng Liu; Thomas S. Huang, Editor(s)