Range imaging technology: new developments and applications for people identification and tracking

Range Imaging (RIM) is a new suitable choice for measurement and modeling in many different applications. RIM is a fusion of two different technologies. According to the terminology, it integrates distance measurement as well as imaging aspects. The distance measurement principle is dominated by the time-of-flight principle while the imaging array (e.g. CMOS sensor) enables each pixel to store also the distance towards the corresponding object point. Due to the technology's relatively new appearance on the market, with a few different realizations, the knowledge of its capabilities is very low. In this paper we present our investigations on the range imaging camera SwissRange (TM) (realized by the Swiss Center for Electronics and Microtechnology - CSEM). Different calibration procedures are performed, including a photogrammetric camera calibration and a distance system calibration with respect to the reflectivity and the distance itself Furthermore we report about measurement applications in the field of surveillance and biometrics. In particular, range imaging data of moving people are analyzed, to identify humans, detect their movements and recover 3D trajectories.