A Very Compact Real Time 3-D Range Sensor For Mobile Robot Applications

Abstract

A very compact 3-D range sensor, ideal for robotic applications and especially for mobile robots is described. The principle of this sensor is based on the use of a double aperture mask in place of the diaphragm of a standard camera lens. The basic optical principle of the system and the image processing algorithms to extract and compute the 3-D coordinates of the scene are described. A first prototype used to evaluate the characteristics of the range sensor and to acquire panoramic images of a room is shown. Performances and experimental results are presented.