A novel method is described for surface pro"le extraction based on morphological processing of multiple range sensor data. The approach taken is extremely #exible and robust, in addition to being simple and straightforward. It can deal with arbitrary numbers and con"gurations of sensors as well as synthetic arrays. The method has the intrinsic ability to suppress spurious readings, crosstalk, and higher-order re#ections, and process multiple re#ections informatively. The performance of the method is investigated by analyzing its dependence on surface structure and distance, sensor beamwidth, and noise on the time-of-#ight measurements. 2001 Pattern Recognition Society. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.