Patent ID: 7103212
Filing Date: 2006-09-05
Classification: G01B,G06K,G06T

Abstract:
1. A system for obtaining a disparity map of a scene, comprising: (a) at least one projection device configured to project a locally unique pattern onto at least a portion of the scene, where said locally unique pattern has the property that any pattern window differs from any other pattern window; (b) sensors for acquiring a plurality of images of the scene, each one of the plurality of images being associated with a unique viewing position, each of the images being a surface-dependent reflection by the scene of ambient light combined with the projected locally unique pattern; and (c) a computing device configured to generate said disparity map by matching corresponding pixels in match windows in at least two of said images by comparing the image values without recovering the projected pattern, where said match windows are chosen to be sufficiently large as to ensure that each match window includes a substantial portion of the image of a locally unique pattern window.