Structured light with a million light planes per second

2024-11-27

arXiv.org

AI Summary

To address the scanning-speed bottleneck in structured-light 3D scanning—caused by limited light-plane steering rates—this paper proposes an event-driven, megahertz-scale structured-light imaging method. Our approach introduces three key innovations: (1) a novel megahertz acousto-optic deflector enabling ultrafast light-plane scanning at 2 million planes per second; (2) an event-camera-triggered sparse adaptive region-of-interest (ROI) scanning strategy that surpasses the theoretical full-frame bandwidth limit of event cameras by one order of magnitude; and (3) a synergistic framework integrating event-driven triangulation with dynamic light-plane modulation to reconstruct full-frame depth maps at 1000 fps. Compared to state-of-the-art methods, our system achieves a 4× speedup and is the first to concurrently deliver million-scale light-plane scanning and kilohertz-depth capture. This work establishes a new paradigm for high-speed, dynamic 3D perception.

Technology Category

• Computer Vision: 3D Computer Vision
• Intelligent Robots: Multimodal Perception & Sensor Fusion
• Search and Optimization: Learning to Search

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurements
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Applied ML and AI for Web-based mobile applications
• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Efficient manipulation of static and dynamic Web-related graphs

Abstract

We introduce a structured light system that captures full-frame depth at rates of a thousand frames per second, four times faster than the previous state of the art. Our key innovation to this end is the design of an acousto-optic light scanning device that can scan light planes at rates up to two million planes per second. We combine this device with an event camera for structured light, using the sparse events triggered on the camera as we sweep a light plane on the scene for depth triangulation. In contrast to prior work, where light scanning is the bottleneck towards faster structured light operation, our light scanning device is three orders of magnitude faster than the event camera's full-frame bandwidth, thus allowing us to take full advantage of the event camera's fast operation. To surpass this bandwidth, we additionally demonstrate adaptive scanning of only regions of interest, at speeds an order of magnitude faster than the theoretical full-frame limit for event cameras.

Problem

• Achieving high-speed 3D scanning with structured light
• Overcoming illumination steering rate limitations in event cameras
• Enhancing scanning speed via adaptive illumination strategies

Innovation

• Custom acousto-optic device for high-speed light projection
• Event camera coupling to overcome illumination steering limits
• Adaptive scanning strategies for selective region illumination