DIMACS Seminar Series on Communication and Information Theory
DIMACS Special Focus on Computational Information Theory and Coding.

Princeton-Rutgers Seminar Series in
Communications and Information Theory




Fast and Flexible 3D Scanning

Szymon Rusinkiewicz, Princeton University:

Thursday March 27, 2003, 4:30 PM, Princeton University, Friend 006

The digitization of the 3D shape of real objects is a rapidly expanding field, with applications in design, manufacturing, and mapping spaces such as buildings and caves. This talk will describe recent research aimed at increasing the speed and flexibility of 3D scanning systems. Two new scanner designs will be presented, one based on active temporal stereo and the other based on projected structured light with stripe boundary coding. Both are based on a space-time stereo framework, in which correspondences between two cameras or between a camera and projector are obtained by correlating windows with extent in both space and time. The scanners are the first stage in a 3D model acquisition pipeline, which also includes algorithms for aligning and merging successive range images. The talk will discuss the value of having the entire pipeline operate in real time, which allows the user to see holes in the model and determine when the object has been completely covered. Results are presented from a prototype that incorporates 60 Hz. structured-light rangefinder, a real-time variant of ICP (iterative closest points) for alignment, and point-based merging and rendering algorithms.