A Sensor for Simultaneously Capturing Texture and Shape by Projecting Structured Infrared Light

Simultaneous capture of the texture and shape of a moving object in real time is expected to be applicable to various fields including virtual reality and object recognition. Two difficulties must be overcome to develop a sensor able to achieve this feature: fast capturing of shape and the simultaneous capture of texture and shape. One-shot capturing methods based on projecting colored structured lights have already been proposed to obtain shape at a high frame rate. However, since these methods used visible lights, it is impossible to capture texture and shape simultaneously. In this paper, we propose a method that uses projected infrared structured light. Since the proposed method uses visible light for texture and infrared light for shape, simultaneous capturing can be achieved. In addition, a system was developed that maps texture on to the captured shape without occlusion by placing the cameras for visible and infrared lights coaxially.