Single-shot three-dimensional sensing with improved data density

Abstract

We introduce a novel concept for motion robust optical 3D-sensing. The concept is based on multi-line triangulation. The aim is to evaluate a large number of projected lines (high data density) in a large measurement volume with high precision. Implementing all those three attributes at the same time allows for the "perfect" real-time 3D movie camera (our long term goal). The key problem towards this goal is ambiguous line indexing: we will demonstrate that the necessary information for unique line indexing can be acquired by two synchronized cameras and a back projection scheme. The introduced concept preserves high lateral resolution, since the lines are as narrow as the sampling theorem allows, no spatial bandwidth is consumed by encoding of the lines. In principle, the distance uncertainty is only limited by shot noise and coherent noise. The concept can be also advantageously implemented with a hand-guided sensor and real-time registration, for a complete and dense 3D-acquisition of complicated scenes.