Active 3D sensing

Active three-dimensional vision is concerned with extracting information from the geometry and the texture of the visible surfaces in a scene, reasoning about the data and finally, communicating the results. With the recent technological advances made in electronics, photonics, computer vision and computer graphics, it is now possible to construct reliable, high resolution and accurate three-dimensional active range cameras. This paper will cover the elements that compose these range cameras. The basic physical principles that underline the majority of these systems are reviewed. In particular, optical triangulation and time delay measurement systems are covered here. A number of applications illustrating the technology are shown. Finally, in order to help the reader, a number of webbased resources in active 3D vision are listed.