Multi-projector color structured-light vision

Research interest in rapid structured-light imaging has grown increasingly for the modeling of moving objects, and a number of methods have been suggested for the range capture in a single video frame. The imaging area of a 3D object using a single projector is restricted since the structured light is projected only onto a limited area of the object surface. Employing additional projectors to broaden the imaging area is a challenging problem since simultaneous projection of multiple patterns results in their superposition in the light-intersected areas and the recognition of original patterns is by no means trivial. This paper presents a novel method of multi-projector color structured-light vision based on projector-camera triangulation. By analyzing the behavior of superposed-light colors in a chromaticity domain, we show that the original light colors cannot be properly extracted by the conventional direct estimation. We disambiguate multiple projectors by multiplexing the orientations of projector patterns so that the superposed patterns can be separated by explicit derivative computations. Experimental studies are carried out to demonstrate the validity of the presented method. The proposed method increases the efficiency of range acquisition compared to conventional active stereo using multiple projectors. (c) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.