Three-dimensional Imaging Sensor System Using an Ultrasonic Array Sensor and a Camera

This paper describes a three-dimensional (3D) imaging sensor system that uses an ultrasonic array sensor and a camera. Ultrasonic array sensors can be used to measure the 3D positions of an object. However, they do not have high resolutions. To overcome this limitation, the proposed system uses the camera to measure the shape of an object and combines this information with 3D position data obtained using the ultrasonic array. The relationship between the ultrasonic array sensor data and the image obtained by the camera was clarified. A prototype system was constructed using a camera and an ultrasonic array sensor that has 16 receivers. The theory proposed in this paper was confirmed experimentally. 3D images were obtained that had higher shape resolutions than those obtained using only an ultrasonic array sensor.