Structured light systems have used many forms of means to create structured patterns ranging from laser lines and physical gratings to current programmable projectors. There are both good and bad aspects of each method, including considerations of contrast, brightness, coherent noise, line stability, and noise associated with the shape of the pattern of lines created. This paper will compare the major means of structured light projection including laser lines, white light gratings, LCDs, DMDs, and LCOS projectors. These method will be analyze with respect to the key performance parameters of the projection means as applied to the most popular means of analysis, including both line center and phase shift analysis. Finally, the results of efforts to characterize the effects of drift of the patterns will be detailed within the context of efforts to obtain absolute distance information at the few micron level.

Date Published: 10 September 2009
PDF: 10 pages
Proc. SPIE 7432, Optical Inspection and Metrology for Non-Optics Industries, 74320S (10 September 2009); doi: 10.1117/12.827416

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7432:
Optical Inspection and Metrology for Non-Optics Industries
Peisen S. Huang; Toru Yoshizawa; Kevin G. Harding, Editor(s)