A Portable and Inexpensive Laser-based 3d-camera

We, the thesis committee for the above candidate for the Master of Science degree, Hereby recommend acceptance of this thesis. Acknowledgements The initiative to build a 3D-camera belongs exclusively to Professor Manuel M. Oliveira, who has been a wonderful advisor, a talented teacher, and a close friend to me for almost one year. Professor Olivera has managed to turn my skepticism about this project into enthusiasm and patience and taught me the importance of documenting every step of the process: " Write, write, write! " The late night discussions on the various topics of the project were invaluable for the rapid and consistent progress. His methodic approach to solving problems and his persistence gave me the confidence I needed to complete this work. Most of all, I want to thank Professor Oliveira for trusting in me. I am grateful to Fred Wood for always being willing to share his solid practical knowledge. The few brainstorms we carried, positively influenced the construction of the 3D-camera prototype. The laser raster generator could not have been built without some of the essential parts that Fred saved for me. I would like to thank Dr. Joseph Katz for taking some of his time to investigate the possible application of a 3D camera in the context of Symbol's business, and also for allowing me to pursue this work on my own, while using some of Symbol's resources. I also like to thank Raj Bridgelall for the idea of using the Laser Projection Display, a product under development at Symbol, as a raster generator and to Bruce Willins for the idea of using the 3D-camera as a interactive length measuring device. Most of all, I am thankful to my wife Daniella, for working hard to free up my time for the past several monts, while working on this project and for showing her confidence in the success of my work; I am thankful to my children, Adrian and Dwana for understanding my choice of not spending as much time with them as I would have liked to. Abstract Shape acquisition of real world objects and scenes has become an essential component of modern computer graphics systems. Presently, there are numerous methods and technologies available to perform this task. While each them has proven very appropriate for a set of applications, there is no single one capable of providing satisfactory results for all situations. Additionally, most of …