To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a thesis written by ...

Chapter 3: Data Collection and Modeling 28Figure 3.1: IVP Ranger SC-386 range acquisition system.The IVP Ranger uses an active triangulation scheme where the scene is illuminatedfrom one direction and viewed from another. The illumination angle, the viewingangle, and the baseline between the illuminator and the viewer (sensor in this case) arethe triangulation parameters.The Ranger consists of a special 512 x 512 pixel camera and a low-power stripe laser.The design of the Ranger is specifically tailored for the camera and the supportingelectronics to integrate image processing functions onto a single parallel-architecturechip. This chip contained within the camera housing has a dedicated range processingfunction that allows for high-speed acquisition of nearly one million points per second.The most common arrangement of the system is to mount the camera and the lasersource relative to the proposed target area to form a triangle where the camera, laser,and target are each corners of the triangle. The angle where the laser forms a corner istypically a right angle such that the laser stripe projects along one side of the triangle.The angle, α, at the camera corner is typically 30-60 degrees. The baseline distancebetween the camera and the laser, denoted by B, specifies the right triangle completely(see dotted line in Figure 3.1). We would like to summarize our experience of the IVPRanger as a sensor that outputs range values as a function of illumination, relativemotion, temperature and surface reflectance as shown in Equation 3.1.r = F( i, j, α , β ,B,T , η,χ , µ )(3.1)