A depth measurement system with the active vision of the striped lighting and rotating mirror

Abstract

A depth measurement system that consists of a single camera, a laser light source and a rotating mirror is investigated. The camera and the light source are fixed, facing the rotating mirror. The laser light is reflected by the mirror and projected to the scene objects whose locations are to be determined. The camera detects the laser light location on object surfaces through the same mirror. The scan over the area to be measured is done by mirror rotation. Advantages are 1) the image of the light stripe remains sharp while that of the background becomes blurred because of the mirror rotation and 2) the only rotating part of this system is the mirror but the mirror angle is not involved in depth computation. This minimizes the imprecision caused by a possible inaccurate angle measurement. The detail arrangement and experimental results are reported. © Springer-Verlag 2004.