The 3dMD system is a photogrammetric scanning system comprised of an array of cameras. The Aerospace Human Systems Laboratory (AHSL) operates two configurations: 3dMDbody.t and 3dMDhand.t. These scans are used to capture accurate 3D representations of human bodies and hands to digitally create space suit and glove designs.
The 3dMD system relies on the multiple cameras to generate the resulting surface mesh for a given scan. Each Modular Camera Unit (MCU) contains three cameras; one color camera generates the texture images and two black and white cameras to generate the surface information. Additionally, each MCU contains a speckle projector which assists creating digital image correlations between in plane and out of plane displacements. Each mobile tower contains two LED panels which can be turned on and off to control the level of lighting during scans.
The 3dMDhand.t system employs 5 MCUs mounted to 3 mobile islands. The 3dMDhand.t system allows AHSL to generate accurate 3D surface meshes for any subject’s hand in a wide array of motions and poses. The 3dMDbody.t system operates similarly to the 3dMDhand.t system with 10 MCUs. The body scanning system allows for performing 20 seconds of full body motion and creating a sequence of 200 surface mesh files. The scans from this system can be imported as a static avatar into the HSIM system or as a poseable avatar into the CAD/Vidya system.