Patent US 6,974,964

An apparatus and method to scan and collect data relative to the position of a moving object. The method includes the calibration, equations, and algorithm needed to compute the surface coordinates of an object. The preferred embodiment of the apparatus includes two light sources and four area array image sensors, one moving device, and one computing device. The device scans the object, generates data, computes the position, and provides a complete measure of the 3D surface coordinates of an object. The methodology includes calibration of a known pattern to the area array image sensor, equations to map the physical points to the image sensor, algorithms to determine a best estimate of the coordinates of occluded points, and techniques to merge the computed coordinates from different sections of the object.