Imperceptible Structured Light Projection Mapping for Augmented Reality

Abstract

A novel method is proposed to imperceptibly embed structured light patterns in projected content and decode them to extract a real time range image stream suitable for dynamic projection mapping applications. A commercially available DLP projector is synchronized with camera capture at rates faster than can be perceived. This allows a stream of grey code patterns to be imperceptibly projected and acquired to realize dense, imperceptible, real time, temporally encoded structured light. The method is deployed on a calibrated and stereo rectified procam system to perform depth triangulation from the extracted patterns. The bandwidth achieved imperceptibly is over 6 million points per second using a general purpose CPU which is comparable to perceptible commercial hardware accelerated structured light depth cameras.