Complete End-to-end Low Cost Solution to a 3D Scanning System with Integrated Turntable

3D reconstruction is a technique used in computer vision and it has a wide range of applications in areas like object recognition, city modelling, virtual reality, physical simulations, video games and special effects. Previously, to perform a 3D reconstruction, specialized hardware was required. Such system was often very expensive and was only available for industrial or research purpose. Nowadays, with the rise of high-quality 3D scanners available at low price, it is possible to design complete 3D scanning systems at very low cost. The objective of this work is to design a homemade acquisition and processing system to perform 3D scanning and reconstruction of objects. The goal of this work also includes making the 3D scanning process fully automated by building and integrating a turntable alongside the software. İn addition, the user is able to perform a full 3D scan by the press of a few buttons on our dedicated Graphical User Interface (GUI) which has been designed for this purpose. Hence, the product of our work will be an acquisition and a processing software capable of controlling the turning table, acquire point cloud frames, register them and reconstruct the 3D mesh which can be exported afterwards to a 3D printer. To achieve this goal, three main steps were required. First, our system acquires point cloud data of a person/object using inexpensive camera sensor. Second, align and convert the acquired point cloud data into a watertight mesh of good quality. Third, export the reconstructed model to a 3D printer to obtain a proper 3D print of the model.