US Patent 9970758 High speed stereoscopic pavement surface scanning system and method

There is disclosed a mobile pavement surface scanning system and method, In an embodiment, the system comprises one or more stereoscopic image capturing devices synchronised with one or more light sources mounted on the platform for illuminating a pavement surface, mounted on a mobile survey platform that provides a trigger mechanism to capture sequential image pairs of the illuminated pavement surface and a movement sensor that continuously measures the movement of the platform and a synchronization signal for time or distance synchronized image capture with accurate GPS positioning. One or more computers process the synchronized images captured stamps the images with one or more of time and distance data, GPS location and calculated 3D elevation for each point on the pavement surface using stereoscopic principles, and assesses the quality of the pavement surface to determine the level of pavement surface deterioration.