3D time-of-flight camera and method

Abstract

The present invention relates to a 3D time-of-flight camera and a corresponding method for acquiring information about a scene, in particular for acquiring depth images of a scene, information about phase shifts between a reference signal and incident radiation of a scene or environmental information about the scene. To increase the frame rate, the proposed camera comprises a radiation source (12) that generates and emits electromagnetic radiation (13) for illuminating said scene (2), a radiation detector (14) that detects electromagnetic radiation (15a, 15b) reflected from said scene (2), said radiation detector (14) comprising one or more pixels (16), in particular an array of pixels, wherein said one or more pixels individually detect electromagnetic radiation reflected from said scene, wherein a pixel comprises two or more detection units (161-1, 161-2, ...) each detecting samples of a sample set of two or more samples and an evaluation unit (18) that evaluates said sample sets of said two or more detection units and generates scene-related information from said sample sets, wherein said evaluation unit comprises a rectification unit (20) that rectifies a subset of samples of said sample sets by use of a predetermined rectification operator defining a correlation between samples detected by two different detection units of a particular pixel, and an information value calculator (22) that determines an information value of said scene-related information from said subset of rectified samples and the remaining samples of the sample sets.

Description

technical field [0001] The present invention relates to 3D time-of-flight (TOF) for acquiring information about a scene, in particular for acquiring a depth image of the scene, information about the phase shift between a reference signal and incident radiation of the scene, or environmental information about the scene. 3D time-of-flight) cameras and corresponding 3D time-of-flight methods. Furthermore, the invention relates to a processor and corresponding processing method for use in such a 3D time-of-flight camera and method. Also, the present invention relates to a computer program for realizing such a processing method on a computer and a computer-readable non-transitory medium storing such a computer program. Background technique [0002] A 3D time-of-flight (ToF) camera obtains a depth image by determining the time it takes for radiation (preferably light) to travel from a source to an object and back to the camera. This is usually achieved by intermittently illumina...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

The reason for this is the need to compensate for sensor inhomogeneities, since quantum wells A and B and their amplification paths do not respond equally to radiation

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