Active Optical Range Imaging Sensors

Abstract

Active, optical range imaging systems collect three-dimensional coordinate data from object surfaces. These systems can be useful in a wide variety of automation applications, including shape acquisition, bin picking, assembly, inspection, gauging, robot navigation, medical diagnosis, cartography, and military tasks. The range-imaging sensors in such systems are unique imaging devices in that the image data points explicitly represent scene surface geometry in a sampled form. At least six different optical principles have been used to actively obtain range images: (1) radar, (2) triangulation, (3) moire, (4) holographic interferometry, (5) lens focusing, and (6) diffraction. The relative capabilities of different sensors and sensing methods are evaluated using a figure of merit based on range accuracy, depth of field, and image acquisition time.

Augmented reality visualization for laparoscopic surgery

“…Structured light has long been used in computer vision to acquire depth information [Besl89,Daley95]. A variety of patterns have been tried: points, lines, multiple points, multiple lines, grids, circles, cross-hairs, thick stripes, binarycoded patterns, color-coded stripes, and random textures.…”

Image-Based 3D Modeling: Modeling from Reality

“…The 3D shape is extracted by analysing the displacements/deformations of the pattern when observed from a different direction (see [8] and Besl [2] for an overview). Typically such methods have relied on the projection of single points or lines and on scanning the scene to gradually build a 3D description point by point or line by line.…”

Information in a photon: Relating entropy and maximum-likelihood range estimation using single-photon counting detectors

“…Light detection and ranging (LIDAR) systems allow range imaging at low light-levels [1,2,3] and stand-off range sensing over long distances [4,5]. LIDAR systems operate on the time-of-flight principle [1] -the target is illuminated with a series of identical light pulses, followed by time-resolved detection of the backscattered photons using time-correlated single-photon counting [5,6].…”