Analysis of Geometric Distortion for Stereo Vision System by VDI/VDE 2634 Guideline

3D structured light scanners have been widely applied in the industry for high-speed and automatic quality control. A lot of scientific research reported that the obtainable accuracy and precision of the scanner vary considerably, and imperfect camera calibration is the main error source in the scanners. Actually, the VDI/VDE 2634 guideline, proposed by Association of German Engineers and Association for Electrical Engineering, Electronics and Information Technologies, has been used for evaluating the accuracy of stereo vision systems. However, the sensitivities of the camera parameters and disparity map for the test results of VDI/VDE 2634 guideline have not been well evaluated. This paper proposes a method for sensitivity analysis based on the principle of stereo vision, Monte Carlo method and VDI/VDE 2634 Part 2 guideline. We simulate the point cloud result of the ball bar artefact with 7 different arrangements and calculate the dimension of sphere diameter, sphere form and sphere-spacing. The simulation results show that the farther ball would have greater systematic error, and the deviation of the focal length and the disparity map would considerably affect the 3D point cloud reconstruction. Moreover, measurement of the ball bar artefact at the different depths of view would efficiently derive the maximum permissible error (MPE) of 3D structured light scanners.