An active 3D robot camera for home environment

Service robots, such as robots working in a home environment, need very robust and reliable sensing mechanisms. In this paper we present a 3D camera based on structured light suitable for robots working in home environment. First, we show that the degradation of precision and robustness comes mainly from the overlapping of multiple codes in the signal received at a camera pixel. Then we propose a novel signal separation coding providing not only the separation of overlapped codes, but also a robust decision on pixel correspondence with error correction. The proposed method was implemented using invisible IR (Infrared) pattern lights in order to avoid making users inconvenient in the home environment. The experimental results showed that the proposed algorithm significantly enhances the robustness and precision in depth imaging, compared to the best known conventional approaches. The proposed approach opens a greater feasibility of applying structured light based depth imaging to a 3D modeling of cluttered workspace for home service robots.