The cardeye: A trinocular active vision system

Abstract

The CardEye is an experimental, trinocular, 3D active vision system. Our goal is to create a flexible, precise tool for active vision research. The system uses an agile trinocular vision head that will be mounted on a robotic arm. The system has several degrees of freedom: pan, tilt, roll, vergence and variable baseline in addition to the automated zoom and focus of the cameras lenses. It utilizes an active lighting device to assist in the surface reconstruction process. After solving for the best system variables to image a surface, a novel multi-stage reconstruction algorithm is used to build a rich, complete 3D model of the surface. In this paper we describe the novel architecture of the system and its successful application to reconstruction of objects of varying surface characteristics.