(December 23, 2015) Various
Structured Light (SL) methods are used to capture 3D range images, where a
number of binary or continuous light patterns are sequentially projected onto a
scene of interest, while a digital cam- era captures images of the illuminated
scene. All existing SL meth- ods require the projector and camera to be
hardware or software synchronized, with one image captured per projected
pattern. A 3D range image is computed from the captured images. The two
synchronization methods have disadvantages, which limit the use of SL methods
to niche industrial and low quality consumer ap- plications. Unsynchronized
Structured Light (USL) is a novel SL method which does not require synchronization
of pattern projec- tion and image capture. The light patterns are projected and
the images are captured independently, at constant, but possibly dif- ferent,
frame rates. USL synthesizes new binary images as would be decoded from the
images captured by a camera synchronized to the projector, reducing the
subsequent computation to standard SL. USL works both with global and rolling
shutter cameras. USL enables most burst-mode-capable cameras, such as modern
smart- phones, tablets, DSLRs, and point-and-shoots, to function as high
quality 3D snapshot cameras. Beyond the software, which can run in the devices,
a separate SL Flash, able to project the sequence of patterns cyclically,
during the acquisition time, is needed to enable the functionality.