Patent ID: 7969583

Claim:
A system for determining an object distance z from a reference point to a point on the object surface, the system comprising: a plurality of light emitters, wherein a group of at least one of the plurality of light emitters comprises an emitter group, wherein a light pattern projected when one emitter group is emitting comprises a fringe set, wherein the projected light pattern of one fringe set exhibits a phase-shift relative to the projected light patterns of other fringe sets, and wherein the phase-shift varies as the distance from an origin of the plurality of fringe sets varies; an imager for obtaining at least one image of at least one of the plurality of fringe sets projected onto the object surface; and a processing unit that is configured to compute a ripple metric value associated with each of a plurality of possible object distance z values and determine an approximated object distance z value using the computed ripple metric values.