Field-of-view enhancement for commercially available active imaging camera using time-of-flight technology

Anne-Sophie Poulin-Girard; Michael Smith; Mathieu Gagnon; Marc-Antoine Legault; Simon Thibault

doi:10.1117/12.2321336

17 September 2018 Field-of-view enhancement for commercially available active imaging camera using time-of-flight technology

Anne-Sophie Poulin-Girard, Michael Smith, Mathieu Gagnon, Marc-Antoine Legault, Simon Thibault

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 10745, Current Developments in Lens Design and Optical Engineering XIX; 1074503 (2018) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2321336
Event: SPIE Optical Engineering + Applications, 2018, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

Active imaging techniques have been, and will remain relevant as an integral part of the sensor network needed in mobile robotics navigation, most commonly with the use of LiDARs. For close range applications, time-of-flight (TOF) cameras are an alternative to more expensive LiDARs. The Kinect v2 (Kinect for XboxOne) has been used frequently as a range imaging camera in machine vision research because of its low cost and good performance. For mobile robotics applications moving at low speed, a larger field of view than the original (70° X 60°) would be desirable to increase awareness of the surroundings, and also detect other moving objects in the trajectory.

Our main goal is therefore to increase the Kinect v2 field of view while keeping its main feature of depth measurements. A simple but effective solution consists in using a conversion lens to increase the ray collection angle before the rays enter the IR camera. Depth measurements remain possible from each pixel using TOF with the Kinect v2 modulated signal, provided the field of illumination matches the field of view. A trade-off has to be made between accuracy of depth measurement, optical performance and field of view/illumination enhancement. Therefore, we modified a Kinect v2 to characterize its optical performances and evaluate its relevancy for applications requiring accurate knowledge of the 3D surroundings.

A field of view improvement of the Kinect v2 and other similar TOF cameras could offer an alternative at minimal cost for depth measurements in machine vision, specifically in mobile robotics research where object detection and mapping tasks are frequently carried out.

Conference Presentation

Citation Download Citation

Anne-Sophie Poulin-Girard, Michael Smith, Mathieu Gagnon, Marc-Antoine Legault, and Simon Thibault "Field-of-view enhancement for commercially available active imaging camera using time-of-flight technology", Proc. SPIE 10745, Current Developments in Lens Design and Optical Engineering XIX, 1074503 (17 September 2018); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2321336

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