Automated package dimensioning system

An automated object dimensioning system comprising:

• (1) a Polar-coordinate based laser detecting and ranging (LADAR) scanning subsystem, including
• (i) a polygonal-type laser scanning mechanism, employing a rotating polygon mirror, for repeatedly scanning a substantially linear amplitude modulated laser beam across the width of a conveyor belt structure along which objects are transported, and without the use of curved mirror structure;
• (ii) an optical bench, disposed within said Polar-coordinate based LADAR scanning subsystem;
• (iii) a light collecting mechanism for collecting laser light from said amplitude modulated laser beam reflected off said scanned objects and focusing said reflected laser light onto a photodetector detecting said focused laser light and producing an electrical signal corresponding to the detected focused laser light, and
• (iv) signal processing circuitry for processing said produced electrical signal and, during each scan of said amplitude modulated laser beam across said scanned object, generating a row of raw digital range data representative of the distance from said rotating polygon to sampled points along said scanned object, and referenced with respect to a Polar-type coordinate reference system symbolically-embedded within said Polar-coordinate based LADAR-based scanning subsystem;
• said signal processing circuitry including and
• (v) a preprocessing data buffer for buffering rows of raw digital range data produced by said signal processing circuitry;
• and
• (2) a programmed digital image processor including:
• a first data processing stage for automatically processing said rows of raw digital range data in said preprocessing data buffer, so as to produce said two-dimensional range data map representative of the space above said conveyor belt structure;
• and
• a second data processing stage for automatically tracing contours within said buffered range data map, wherein said traced contours are represented by a first set of indices (m,n) indicative of objects being transported along said conveyor belt structure;
• a third data processing stage for automatically processing said first set of indices (m,n) associated with said traced contours so as to detect vertices associated with polygonal-shaped objects extracted from said range data map, said detected vertices being represented by a second set of indices (m,n) and indicative of polygonal-shaped objects corresponding to objects being transported along said conveyor belt structure;
• and
• a fourth data processing stage for automatically processing said second set of indices (m,n) associated with said detected vertices so as to detect a set of candidate corner points associated with the corners of a particular object being transported along said conveyor belt structure, said candidate corner points being represented by a third set of indices (m,n) and indicative of the corners of a particular object being transported along said conveyor belt structure.