The use of a uniquely encoded light pattern for range data acquisition

Building a three-dimensional vision system requires three-dimensional scene information in the form of range data. Using a structured light system accompanied by the triangulation method is a typical approach to obtain such data. In this paper, we present a ranging method using an encoded grid light pattern. Our method is different from the previous approaches in such a way that the codes are unique for any grid intersection points and maximal for a given set of code primitives. An efficient data acquisition procedure is obtained by applying the uniqueness of a code. The encoding scheme for the light pattern and the decoding scheme for the imaged illuminated pattern are presented. We also discuss a fault-tolerant approach which makes the ranging system robust.