Smart Access Image Sensors for High-Speed and High-Resolution 3-D Measurement based on Light-Section Method

—This contribution is devoted to high-speed and high-resolution 3-D imaging based on the light-section method. Our smart access image sensors achieve high-speed position detection on the sensor plane to realize real-time 3-D imaging with high range accuracy. A high-speed position sensor using a quad-tree scan implementation achieves 10k points/s position detection of a projected spot beam. To reduce the number of frames required for a 3-D image, we present high-speed position sensors with new row-parallel architectures to get positions of a projected sheet beam efficiently. Moreover we present a high-speed readout scheme with adaptive threshold circuits to realize a higher-resolution 3-D image sensor employing a compact pixel circuit. We discuss the features and advantages of smart access methods for advanced 3-D imaging applications on the basis of comparison.