Time‐of‐Flight Cameras in Computer Graphics

Abstract

A growing number of applications depend on accurate and fast 3D scene analysis. Examples are model and lightfield acquisition, collision prevention, mixed reality and gesture recognition. The estimation of a range map by image analysis or laser scan techniques is still a time-consuming and expensive part of such systems. A lower-priced, fast and robust alternative for distance measurements are time-of-flight (ToF) cameras. Recently, significant advances have been made in producing low-cost and compact ToF devices, which have the potential to revolutionize many fields of research, including computer graphics, computer vision and human machine interaction (HMI).These technologies are starting to have an impact on research and commercial applications. The upcoming generation of ToF sensors, however, will be even more powerful and will have the potential to become 'ubiquitous real-time geometry devices' for gaming, web-conferencing, and numerous other applications. This paper gives an account of recent developments in ToF technology and discusses the current state of the integration of this technology into various graphics-related applications.

Combining Stereo and Time-of-Flight Images with Application to Automatic Plant Phenotyping

“…4). We have not considered environmental effects or measurement uncertainties related to the ToF camera as in [5,9] (e.g. the reflection issue in a cluttered environment and the influence of intensity on depth), which are beyond the scope of this paper.…”

“…al. [9] briefly discussed error sources and challenges, and Beder and Koch [2] developed a checkerboard method and calibration software. Since the ToF image is much coarser in resolution compared to the colour image, the transformation from ToF image coordinates to colour image coordinates alone would only give isolated point depth measurements in the colour image.…”

“…al. [9] gave an overview on techniques and applications of ToF images, and these provide an option for improving recovery of depth information by augmenting stereo pairs with partial, coarse resolution, ToF images as in Fig. 1(c).…”

Realistic texture synthesis for point-based fruitage phenotype

“…According to fruit object requirements, image accuracy, shooting speed, cost, device weight, file format, portability, and performance in time and space, we chose a digital camera with a PCP-400 laser 3D scanner as the image acquisition device [35,36]. The real size of a piece of acquired image data is approximately 9 cm*12 cm.…”

Real-Time Distance-Dependent Mapping for a Hybrid ToF Multi-Camera Rig

“…They present several advantages such as simultaneously providing intensity and depth information for every pixel at a high frame rate. Moreover, the recent advances in industrializing and producing economic, compact, robust to light and illumination changes ToF cameras is starting to have an impact on commercial applications [1], [2]. However, ToF cameras and especially the industrial ones, cannot yet attain the resolution and precision of alternative 3-D sensing systems.…”