2 Novel Methods for Range Imaging Using the Mapp2200 Smart Sensor

A range image is an image where each pixel represents a measurement of the distance from the camera to the object. Typical applications for range imaging are inspection and dimension measurement in industrial processes, e.g. in the forest products industry. Range image acquisition can be made in many different ways. In this paper we use an active triangulation method where a sheet-of-light illuminates the scene. The sensor level signal processing task is to extract the light impact position in each sensor column. Two novel algorithms implemented on the commercially available smart image sensor MAPP2200 are presented. Both algorithms give 256 pixel width resolution at a line frequency of 15 - 20 kHz, corresponding to range pixel rates of 4 - 5 MHz, and range resolution varying from 8 up to 13 bits in special cases. This is considerably faster than other proposed methods. One of the methods also gives intensity data concurrent and in perfect registration with the range data and the other has an error detection capability to detect multiple peaks on the sensor.