Development of Compact Range Image Sensor with Multi-Slit Laser Projector that Uses Disparity and Blur

Abstract

In this paper, development of a compact and light weight range image sensor is presented. The sensor is designed for installing on a robot hand to help it sense the target or avoid the obstacle. The sensor we present can obtain 3D distance information at a range of 50mm - 300mm, which is simply made by a USB video device class camera and a multi-slit laser projector. The improvement over the previous sensor is a newly added method of the range measurement. The new sensor can measure the distance by using both disparity and blur. A method of Gaussian curve fitting to quantify the image blur is presented to obtain the range image at a distance closer than 100mm.