3D vision technology – monocular 2½D (from height images)

Monocular 2½D – Depth from Focus & Sheet of Light

There are various so-called active technologies for the extraction of height information with one camera. The resulting 3D information is very similar to binocular stereo. The methods used most often are:

  • Depth from focus (DFF) extracts distance information by calculating the focus of all pixels of the image. A small depth of field is used to calculate the distance of the object's surface to the camera.
  • Sheet of light means measuring an elevation profile of an object by reconstructing the projected line of light on this object.

These technologies are particularly suitable for 3D reconstruction – in case of DFF especially suitable for small objects, in case of sheet of light for objects without texture. Typical application examples include quality inspection of 3D objects as well as position recognition of 3D objects.

For dense height maps, our software offers various methods that can be used to process 2½D images, e.g., to determine object edges or angles between 3D planes. In the case of sheet of light, highly accurate line- or point-oriented 3D measurements can be applied as well.