Patent ID: 11943424
Assignee: MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING, LLC
Field: Audio-visual technology (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC H  G | IPC G  H

Claim 7:
8. A method for using time-of-flight imaging and stereo imaging, the method comprising:
emitting first light to illuminate a scene;
detecting, by an array of time-of-flight pixels, second light that is reflected from the first light, wherein:
each time-of-flight pixel includes a lone photo-sensing diode and at least one of (i) two transfer gates or (ii) two photo gates; and
the array of time-of-flight pixels includes a plurality of micro-lenses and each micro-lens is shared by at least two time-of-flight pixels;

determining, by an individual time-of-flight pixel in the array, (i) phase shift data based on a phase shift between the first light and the second light and (ii) intensity data based on an amplitude of the second light;
determining disparity data using the intensity data of each of the at least two time-of-flight pixels shared by an individual micro-lens; and
determining a distance between an object in the scene based in part on at least one of the phase shift data determined for each time-of-flight pixel in the array or the disparity data determined in association with the individual micro-lens of the plurality of micro-lenses.