A 3D scanner for transparent glass

Many practical tasks in industry, such as automatic inspection or robot vision, often require the scanning of three-dimensional shapes by use of non-contact techniques. However, few methods have been proposed to measure three-dimensional shapes of transparent objects because of the difficulty of dealing with transparency and specularity of the surface. This paper presents a 3D scanner for transparent glass objects based on Scanning From Heating (SFH), a new method that makes use of local surface heating and thermal imaging.