Phase disambiguation using spatio-temporally modulated illumination in depth sensing

Abstract

Phase ambiguity is a major problem in the depth measurement in either time-of-flight or phase shifting. Resolving the ambiguity using a low frequency pattern sacrifices the depth resolution, and using multiple frequencies requires a number of observations. In this paper, we propose a phase disambiguation method that combines temporal and spatial modulation so that the high depth resolution is preserved while the number of observation is kept. A key observation is that the phase ambiguities of temporal and spatial domains appear differently with respect to the depth. Using this difference, the phase can disambiguate for a wider range of interest. We develop a prototype to show the effectiveness of our method through real-world experiments.