Event Location: GHC 4405

Abstract: Active illumination systems use a controllable light source and a light sensor to measure properties of a scene. For such a system to work reliably it must be able to handle the effects of global light transport, bright ambient light, defocus and scene motion.

The goal of this thesis is to develop computational techniques and hardware arrangements to make active illumination devices that work under real world conditions. We aim to combine the robustness of a scanning laser rangefinder with the speed, measurement density, compactness and economy of a consumer depth camera.

Towards this end, we have made three contributions so far. The first is a computational technique for compensating for the effects of motion while separating the direct and global components of illumination. The second is a method that combines triangulation and depth from illumination defocus cues to increase the working range of a projector-camera system. The third is a new active illumination device that can efficiently capture the epipolar component of light transport between a source and sensor. The device is robust to many global light transport mechanisms and also works outdoors in bright sunlight despite using a low power source.

Our ongoing work focuses on formulating models for epipolar light transport with the aim of improving imaging and sensing performance in the presence of scattering media. We also propose to extend our epipolar-only imaging technique to time-of-flight sensing. We believe that the work proposed in this thesis could find applications in a diverse set of fields including mobile robotics, medical imaging and agriculture.

Committee:Srinivasa G Narasimhan, Chair

Simon Lucey

William L. “Red” Whittaker

Wolfgang Heidrich, KAUST and University of British Columbia

Kiriakos N. Kutulakos, University of Toronto