Optical PMD 3D sensor evaluation for motion detection and tracking application

There is a class of optical sensors for measuring distance, built on the principle of measuring the time of flight of a stream of photons reflected from the target. The primary use of such sensors is to determine the presence or absence of elements on automated production lines. In this paper the statistical properties and characteristics are investigated and identified of the depth image created by the commercial off-the-shelf ToF PMD (Photonic Mixer Device Time of Flight) 3D sensor. For this purpose, a special application that communicates with the sensor through the XML RPC protocol (eXtensible Markup Language Remote Procedure Call) was developed. Using, the identified sensor characterisics, the boundaries of the applicability of such a sensor in different applications may be determined. As an example, the use of the sensor for detecting and tracking the movement of small parts or animals is presented.