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US 10,480,928 B2Granted
Parallax-based determination of dimension(s) related to an object
AssigneeDatalogic USA, Inc.
InventorAndrew Hatstat
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
First and second reflective portions are angled (e.g., included angle of approximately 178 degrees) with respect to one another to produce a parallax image of a structured light pattern (e.g., linear pattern) projected onto a surface of an object to determine at least one dimension (e.g., range, height, width) associated with the object. The reflections may be detected by a light sensor (e.g., a single linear image sensor) as dual “differential” parallax images of the structured light pattern, which advantageously inherently causes errors to cancel out.
Claims38
A system, comprising:
- a light source operable to emit light outward into an environment;
- a first reflective surface and a second reflective surface, the first and the second reflective surfaces positioned with respect to the light source to concurrently receive light returned from an object in the environment as a structured light pattern, the second reflective surface oriented at a non-zero angle with respect to the first reflective surface;
- a light sensor positioned to concurrently detect, in parallax, light reflected from the object in the environment via both the first and the second reflective surfaces, respectively as a first instance of the structured light pattern reflected from the first reflective surface and a second instance of the structured light pattern reflected from the second reflective surface;
- and
- at least one processor communicatively coupled to the light sensor, and which in operation correlates a relative position of the first and the second instances of the structured light pattern detected by the light sensor and determines at least one dimension related to the object based at least in part on the correlation of the relative positions of the first and the second instances of the structured light pattern detected by the light sensor, wherein to correlate a relative position of the first and the second instances of the structured light pattern detected by the light sensor, the at least one processor:
- for the first instance of the structured light pattern, determines at each of a plurality of positions along the first instance of the structured light pattern a respective centroid for the first instance of the structured light pattern at the respective position;
- and
- for the second instance of the structured light pattern, determines at each of a plurality of positions along the second instance of the structured light pattern a respective centroid for the second instance of the structured light pattern at the respective position.
5 more elements
A method, comprising:
- emitting a light beam by a light source;
- reflecting light returned from an object in an environment by a first reflective surface;
- concurrently reflecting the light returned from the object in the environment by a second reflective surface, the second reflective surface oriented at a non-zero angle with respect to the first reflective surface;
- detecting by a light sensor the light reflected from the object in the environment via both the first and the second reflective surfaces in parallax, respectively as a first instance of a structured light pattern reflected from the first reflective surface and a second instance of the structured light pattern reflected from the second reflective surface;
- and
- determining by at least one processor communicatively coupled to the light sensor, at least one dimension related to the object based at least in part on a correlation of a relative position of the first and the second instances of the structure light pattern detected by the light sensor including:
- for the first instance of the structured light pattern, determining at each of a plurality of positions along the first instance of the structured light pattern a respective centroid for the first instance of the structured light pattern at the respective position;
- and
- for the second instance of the laser line, determining at each of a plurality of positions along the second instance of the structured light pattern a respective centroid for the second instance of the structured light pattern at the respective position.
6 more elements
A system, comprising:
- a light source operable to emit light outward into an environment;
- a first reflective surface and a second reflective surface oriented relative to each other at a non-zero angle, and positioned with respect to the light source to concurrently receive light returned from an object in the environment as a structured light pattern;
- a light sensor positioned to concurrently detect, in parallax, light reflected from the object in the environment via both the first reflective surface and the second reflective surface, respectively as a first instance of the structured light pattern reflected from the first reflective surface and a second instance of the structured light pattern reflected from the second reflective surface;
- and
- at least one processor communicatively coupled to the light sensor, and configured to:
- correlate a relative position of the first instance of the structured light pattern and the second instance of the structured light pattern by determining at each of a plurality of positions along the first instance of the structured light pattern a respective centroid for the first instance of the structured light pattern at the respective position, and determining at each of a plurality of positions along the second instance of the structured light pattern a respective centroid for the second instance of the structured light pattern at the respective position;
- and
- determine at least one dimension related to the object based at least in part on the correlation of the relative positions of the first and the second instances of the structured light pattern detected by the light sensor.
5 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.