Measurement of mirror surfaces using specular reflection and analytical computation

In many applications, it is desirable to know three-dimensional information of mirror surfaces. However, the reflective characteristic of mirror surfaces makes many traditional three-dimensional reconstruction methods, such as stereovision or structured light scanning, fail. In this paper, a novel method is proposed to measure mirror surfaces. It is implemented with practical hardware and software that directly obtain analytic solutions for three-dimensional points on a mirror surface. Experimental results verified the effectiveness of the proposed method. In particular, this proposed method aims at providing an effective method to reconstruct specular weld pool surfaces which typically are highly dynamic and irregular. The capability to directly obtain analytic solutions for a set of points from a mirror surface as proposed and developed in this paper is a key to effectively measuring such highly dynamic and irregular mirror surfaces.