• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers
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• v.18 no.11
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• pp.2944-2953
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• 1994

Active range finders using laser beam have been widely used for the factory automation and quality assurance, but they may be unreliable if the object' slope is steep or its surface is specular. The reliability of an active range finder was analyzed for the variation of the reflected laser beam intensity. First, the properties of the object's reflection were modeled by using the bidirectional reflectance-distribution function(BRDF), and then the variation of the laser beam brightness was formulated for the different configuratioin of the object and sensor. The experimental data of the laser beam reflection were obtained for two materials, mild steel and stainless steel. The parameters of the proposed model were obtained by fitting the data of the mild steel to the model and it was found that the results calculated from the proposed model were in good agreement with the experimental data.