Automatisation of robotic arm for automatic scanning

Hello.
Sorry if I'm asking stupid questions, I'm not really experienced.
I am a student, and I have to make a progect about automatisation of capturing data from real world objects, and automatically updating it for future analysis and comparation.
Usually there are some sensors are used, but it's not a really interesting. We have 3d scanners in one of the labs. We worked with them a bit. We used them to scan manufactured different machine parts , to compare scan to original CAD models which were used to produse this parts. Like some type of quality control.
So I came up with an idea, that I can compare not 3d scan and CAD model, but two 3d scans. For example we have some kind of machine which can get some physical damade while being used, and we need to track this damage. So want to try to automate this process.
The scanners we have are handheld, and normally manipulated by human hand. I was trying to find type of scanner we have on manufacturers website, but they have only this Space Spider while in the lap there's just two like original Spiders, white ones. Not sure what's the difference, specs look pretty similar. Anyway the idea is to replace human hand with robotic arm. There's an SDK which works with this outdated scanner, I've tried it a bit.
The first and maybe the easiest idea is if our object is stationary, I can once program the arm to do certain movements, to capture the whole object and then just run it each time. With SDK I can autorun scanning process, stop it and export data. The other Idea, is if the shape or position or whatever of the object can change so that old path won't allow to capture the whole shape next run. Then the arm movements shoud be adjusted according to what has been captured, and what not.
The thing why I'm here, I'm not really experienced with robots. So I need some guide where to look and what to read to choose the proper robotic arm (the best would be to build it myself) which can be programmed. I can write on C++ and a bit of C.

Thank you for any help. The deadline is spring 2022, I've just strarted to collect information as I got this task.