Laser stripe center extraction is a key step for the profile measurement of line structured light sensors (LSLS). To accurately obtain the center coordinates at sub-pixel level, an improved gray-gravity method (IGGM) was proposed. Firstly, the center points of the stripe were computed using the gray-gravity method (GGM) for all columns of the image. By fitting these points using the moving least squares algorithm, the tangential vector, the normal vector and the radius of curvature can be robustly obtained. One rectangular region could be defined around each of the center points. Its two sides that are parallel to the tangential vector could alter their lengths according to the radius of the curvature. After that, the coordinate for each center point was recalculated within the rectangular region and in the direction of the normal vector. The center uncertainty was also analyzed based on the Monte Carlo method. The obtained experimental results indicate that the IGGM is suitable for both the smooth stripes and the ones with sharp corners. The high accuracy center points can be obtained at a relatively low computation cost. The measured results of the stairs and the screw surface further demonstrate the effectiveness of the method.

A line structured light sensor (LSLS) is generally constituted of a laser line projector and a camera. With the advantages of simple construction, non-contact, and high measuring speed, it is of great perspective in 3D measurement. For traditional LSLSs, the camera exposure time is usually fixed while the surface properties can be varied for different measurement tasks. This would lead to under/over exposure of the stripe images or even failure of the measurement. To avoid these undesired situations, an adaptive control method was proposed to modulate the average stripe width (ASW) within a favorite range. The ASW is first computed based on the back propagation neural network (BPNN), which can reach a high accuracy result and reduce the runtime dramatically. Then, the approximate linear relationship between the ASW and the exposure time was demonstrated via a series of experiments. Thus, a linear iteration procedure was proposed to compute the optimal camera exposure time. When the optimized exposure time is real-time adjusted, stripe images with the favorite ASW can be obtained during the whole scanning process. The smoothness of the stripe center lines and the surface integrity can be improved. A small proportion of the invalid stripe images further proves the effectiveness of the control method.

It is a difficult task to analyze the coupling characteristics of rotating machinery fault signals under the influence of complex and nonlinear interference signals. This difficulty is due to the strong noise background of rotating machinery fault feature extraction and weaknesses, such as modal mixing problems, in the existing Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition (EEMD) time–frequency analysis methods. To quantitatively study the nonlinear synchronous coupling characteristics and information transfer characteristics of rotating machinery fault signals between different frequency scales under the influence of complex and nonlinear interference signals, a new nonlinear signal processing method—the harmonic assisted multivariate empirical mode decomposition method (HA-MEMD)—is proposed in this paper. By adding additional high-frequency harmonic-assisted channels and reducing them, the decomposing precision of the Intrinsic Mode Function (IMF) can be effectively improved, and the phenomenon of mode aliasing can be mitigated. Analysis results of the simulated signals prove the effectiveness of this method. By combining HA-MEMD with the transfer entropy algorithm and introducing signal processing of the rotating machinery, a fault detection method of rotating machinery based on high-frequency harmonic-assisted multivariate empirical mode decomposition-transfer entropy (HA-MEMD-TE) was established. The main features of the mechanical transmission system were extracted by the high-frequency harmonic-assisted multivariate empirical mode decomposition method, and the signal, after noise reduction, was used for the transfer entropy calculation. The evaluation index of the rotating machinery state based on HA-MEMD-TE was established to quantitatively describe the degree of nonlinear coupling between signals to effectively evaluate and diagnose the operating state of the mechanical system. By adding noise to different signal-to-noise ratios, the fault detection ability of HA-MEMD-TE method in the background of strong noise is investigated, which proves that the method has strong reliability and robustness. In this paper, transfer entropy is applied to the fault diagnosis field of rotating machinery, which provides a new effective method for early fault diagnosis and performance degradation-state recognition of rotating machinery, and leads to relevant research conclusions.

A line structured light measurement system is proposed which can obtain both the 3D geometrical and color information of objects. The profile sensor of the system is consisted of a black-and-white camera and an infrared laser line projector. A high precision calibration method is presented for the range sensor by use of a planar target. Then, the point coordinates of the measurement profile can be computed according to center coordinates of laser stripe and the calibrated sensor parameters. The wavelength of the laser projector is 850nm which is out of the spectrum response range of the color camera. Thus, the projected laser line would not affect the color acquisition. The transformation matrix between the two camera coordinate systems is determined and then optimized based on the invariance of cross ratio. By use of the transformation matrix, each point on the profile can be projected onto the image plane of the color camera, and the color information can be obtained synchronously. The measurement results show that the mean radius error of a ceramic ball can reach 0.009mm, and the mean mapping error of profile points on color image plane is 0.16pixel. The 3D measurement results of the textured objects further validate the proposed system.

Due to the advantages of simple construction, easy application and good environmental suitability, handheld structured-light measurement systems have broad application prospects in 3D measurements. Here, a monocular-vision-guided line-structured-light measurement system is developed, and the posture of the handheld device can be obtained via a specifically designed target attached to it. No more marker points need to be adhered onto the object under inspection. The key for the system calibration is to obtain the coordinate transformation matrix from the sensor to the featured target coordinate system. The mathematical model of the system is first established. Then, an improved multi-view calibration method is proposed, where a selection process for the image pairs is conducted for accuracy improvement. With this method, the maximum relative error of the measured stair heights can be reduced from 0.48% to 0.16%. The measurement results for the specific parts further verified the effectiveness of the proposed system and the calibration method.