Patent ID: 7336375

Claim:
A system for acquiring an approximation of a surface geometry of a 3-dimensional object within a 3-dimensional object coordinate system in known relationship to the object, wherein the system comprises: a non-contact scanner, including: a source of structured light; an imaging electro-optical sensor; an image processor; a wireless data transmitter; and at least one position indicator; a scanner tracking subsystem configured to determine essentially continuously the 3D position of the non-contact scanner as well as the 3D position of the structured light at the times when the imaging electro-optical sensor acquires an image; a wireless data receiver configured to receive data transmitted from the wireless data transmitter; and a computer, in communication with the receiver, configured to correlate each received datum temporally with a corresponding 3D scanner position, to transform the data into coordinates relative to the object coordinate system according to the corresponding position of the scanner, and to accumulate the transformed coordinates as 3-dimensional surface points to model the object virtually.