The hiscore camera - A real time three dimensional and color camera

A new real time 3D-data and color acquisition system for the mid-distance range (0.5-3m) employing color-encoded structured light is presented. The system is integrated using low-cost components and allows the combination of 2D and 3D image processing algorithms since it provides a 2D-color image of the scene in addition to the range data. Its design is focused on enabling the system to operate reliably in real-world scenarios, i.e. in uncontrolled environments and with arbitrary scenes. To that end novel approaches for encoding and recognizing the projected light are used which make the system practically independent of intrinsic object colors and minimize the influence of the ambient light conditions. Experimental results obtained for the first applications of the system, 3D face and gesture recognition tasks, are presented.