Very Fast 3-D Sensing Hardware

Abstract

This paper describes two fast range sensing systems that are being developed at the RobottcS Institute of Carnegie MelIon. The first system is a passive video-rate stereo machine, based on the multi-baseline stereo theory, whose expected performance will exceed that of existing stereo methods or mediumto-short distance scanninglaser range Ande rsin most categories: high throughput (l.% Million pointdsecond), frame rate (30 framedsec), low latency Oess than 2 msec after imaging), dense depth map (256x250, and high precision (7 bit) m’th uncertainty estimation. Another system is an active laser range-image sensor that acquires a complete 28 x 32 range frame in as little as one millisecond. Using VLSI, sensing and processing are combined into a unique sensing element that measures range in a fully-parallel fashion. gones: high throughput (1.96 Million points/second), frame rate (30 franes/sec), low latency (less than 2 msec after imging), dense depth map (256x256). and high precision (7 bit) with uncertainty estimation. Another system is an active laser range-image sensor that acquires a complete 28 x 32 range frame in as little as one millisecond. Using VLSI, sensing and processing are combined into a unique sensing element that measures range in a fully-parallel fashion. While one is passive and the other is active, both systems achieve the high performance by taking advantage of local parallelism which can be mapped into hardware. The following two sections will describe the current state of our development effort.