RANGE IMAGING WITH ADAPTIVE COLOR STRUCTURED LIGHT

In range sensing with time-multiplexed structured light, there is a tr ade-off between accuracy, robustness and the acquisition period. The a cquisition period is lower bounded by the product of the number of pro jection patterns and the time needed for acquiring a single image. In this paper a novel structured light method is described. Adaptation of the number and form of the projection patterns to the characteristics of the scene takes place as part of the acquisition process. Noise ma rgins are matched to the actual noise level, thus reducing the number of projection patterns to the necessary minimum. Color is used for lig ht plane labeling. The dimension of the pattern space (and the noise m argins) are thus increased without raising the number of projection pa tterns. It is shown that the color of an impinging light plane can be identified from the image of the illuminated scene, even with colorful scenes, identification is local and does not rely on spatial color se quences, Therefore, in comparison to other color structured light tech niques, assumptions about smoothness and color neutrality of the scene can be relaxed. The suggested approach has been implemented and the t heoretical results are supported by experiments.