Optical tactile probe for the inspection of mechanical components

Mechanical components are often subjected to tolerances and geometrical specification. This paper describes an automatic 3D measurement system based on the integration of a stereo structured light scanner and a tactile probe. The tactile probe is optically tracked by the optical scanner by means of 3D measurements of a prismatic flag, rigidly connected to the probe and equipped with multiple chessboard patterns. Both the stereo vision system and the tactile probe can be easily configured enabling complete reconstructions of components having complex shapes. For instance, structured light scanning can be used to acquire external and visible geometries while tactile probing can be limited to the acquisition of internal and hidden surfaces.