Center For Visualization & Virtual Environments
3D Data Acquisition
A primary branch of our research is in 3D data acquisition. Most of our effort has been in the study of structured light techniques involving light striping while some of our earlier work involved acoustic imaging. Our latest work is in real time 3D data acquisition and processing using high speed Spatial Light Modulation (SLM) devices. In these systems, we use time and space light stripe modulation techniques to achieve high SNR as well as high through put. We believe that this area of study is becoming very important for both industrial and commercial applications. In the past decades many methodologies of structured light have been developed. However, these methods have been limited by the computational requirements. With the emergence of low cost high speed general purpose computers and standardized high speed buses and interfaces, many of these methods become practical. In the last few years SLM technology has reached speeds that will support data acquisition rates, and preprocessing capabilities that will allow for 3D data acquisition/reconstruction near video rates.
We study the 3-dimensional data acquisition process and its application to 3D video. Our long-term goal is to develop general-purpose 3D movies that can be viewed and reviewed from arbitrary camera angles and trajectories. We are using structured light techniques to achieve this goal. Applications include human computer interfacing for the disabled, augmented reality, object recognition, motion analysis and industrial measurements.
There are four basic methods for using light to acquire 3-D topologies: (1) time of flight, (2) structured light, (3) stereo vision, and (4) focal plane methods. We are interested in all of these methods but for this research we are concentrating on the structured light technique because of its low cost, controllable accuracy and with our composite pattern technique, its ability to be implemented at video rate.