Rainbow three-dimensional camera: New concept of high-speed three-dimensional vision systems

A novel principle of a high-speed 3-D camera is presented. This 3-D camera system is able to achieve the instantaneous full-frame 3-D imaging capabilities that no other commercially available 3-D image acquisition systems or 3-D rangefinders can currently achieve. There are no mechanical moving parts in this system, therefore the mechanical design can be very simple and reliable, and there is no ''eye-safe'' problem. The 3-D camera can be integrated using all off-the-shelf products, which leads to a very low production cost and short development period. The 3-D camera is also able to provide normal 2-D intensity image of the scene using a single camera, which will greatly facilitate the object recognition and the sensor fusion tasks in machine vision applications. Simulations and hardware experiments have been performed, and the results are presented. (C) 1996 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers.