| Fig 1: A scene is recorded by a user. The projector is held by the user to illuminate the objects. The smartphone records the scene and displays it on the screen. |
| Fig 2: A depth map of the reconstruction. The color of the pixels encodes the distance to the camera: white pixels are further away from the camera, black pixels are closer. |
In this project, we are looking at a technique that has been around for a long time - structured light scanning. This is used to digitize the geometry of objects. Our aim is to implement this technology on mobile devices such as a smartphone or a battery-powered projector.
In strip light scanning, a projector is used to project patterns onto an object. A digital camera captures images of the illuminated object. These images can be used to calculate from the known patterns which beam of light from the projector has illuminated which point on the object. This also makes it possible to determine the distance between the surface of the projector and the camera.
Such a system with a small projector can be used to quickly illuminate an object from different positions. To do this, however, the projector must be held in the hand. The inevitable shaking of the user is transferred to the projected image and causes an inaccurate reconstruction. A master's thesis investigated the extent to which different patterns were affected.