Towards a High Resolution, Video Rate, 3D Sensor For Machine Vision

One of the most important challenges in machine vision is 3D data acquisition and processing. It has been said that most problems are inherently three dimensional and that 2D problems rarely exist. Many applications, for instance inspection of component boards, require three dimensional information to avoid the special case engineering required to handle varying colors, shapes, and backgrounds of low contrast. Acquisition speed is a major limitation of 3D sensing devices currently available. This paper surveys a number of techniques which can be used in future high speed scanning and detector systems to overcome these limitations. Performance of each system type will be compared and examples of high resolution 3D maps will be shown.