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Introduction

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Time-of-Flight and Structured Light Depth Cameras

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Abstract

Consumer depth cameras belong to two technological families; structured light depth cameras employ active triangulation, while matricial Time-of-Flight cameras operate on the basis of the Time-of-Flight (ToF) principle. We introduce foundational concepts for understanding both families and cover the computer vision concepts behind pin-hole imaging, camera calibration, 2-view, and N-view stereo which lie at the heart of operating structured light cameras. The chapter also introduces the Time-of-Flight (ToF) principle and modulation types used in point-wise ToF measurements, as well as operations of the matricial ToF sensors which ToF depth cameras rely on.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    It is worth to notice that the phase \(\varphi _{c}\) of the carrier at the transmitter side is generally different from the phase \(\varphi _{c}^{{\prime}}\) at the receiver. Both \(\varphi _{c}\) and \(\varphi _{c}^{{\prime}}\) are usually unknown, especially in the case of a non-coherent process which is the typical practical solution. However, the system does not need to be aware of the values of \(\varphi _{c}\) and \(\varphi _{c}^{{\prime}}\) and it is inherently robust to the lack of their knowledge.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information Engineering, University of Padova, Padova, Italy

    Pietro Zanuttigh, Giulio Marin, Fabio Dominio & Ludovico Minto

  2. Aquifi Inc., Palo Alto, CA, USA

    Carlo Dal Mutto

  3. 3D Everywhere s.r.l., Padova, Italy

    Guido Maria Cortelazzo

Authors
  1. Pietro Zanuttigh
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  2. Giulio Marin
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  3. Carlo Dal Mutto
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  4. Fabio Dominio
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  5. Ludovico Minto
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  6. Guido Maria Cortelazzo
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Zanuttigh, P., Marin, G., Dal Mutto, C., Dominio, F., Minto, L., Cortelazzo, G.M. (2016). Introduction. In: Time-of-Flight and Structured Light Depth Cameras. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30973-6_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30973-6_1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-30971-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-30973-6

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