Method and Apparatus for Compressive Acquisition of Depth Range

Technology

The invention captures depth information for a three-dimensional scene in an efficient and cost-effective manner using only a single time-resolved detector and a pulsed laser diode as the illumination unit. The system achieves spatial resolution through patterned sensing of the scene using a digital micro-mirror device (DMD) array. The depth map reconstruction uses parametric signal modeling to recover the set of distinct depth ranges present in the scene. Then, using a convex program that exploits the sparsity of the Laplacian of the depth map, the spatial content at the estimated depth ranges is recovered.  

Problem Addressed

Traditional methods of sensing three-dimensional (3D) scenes suffer from poor spatial resolution, low range accuracy, and the high cost of its implementation. Therefore, it is desirable to develop a depth acquisition system that possesses high spatial resolution without increasing the device cost and complexity.  

Advantages

• Higher spatial resolution, lower device cost and complexity than conventional 3D acquisition techniques
• Well suited for limited energy availability application such as battery powered applications and applications with smaller form factor e.g. laptops, digital cameras, etc.
• Capable of minimizing the negative effects of ambient light when capturing 3D scenes  

Publications

"CoDAC: A Compressive Depth Acquisition Camera Framework." In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, Kyoto, Japan, March 2012, 3809-3812.