Abstract: An active rangefinder system disclosed herein parameterizes a set of transformations predicting different possible appearances of a projection feature projected into a three-dimensional scene. A matching module matches an image of the projected projection feature with one of the transformations, and a depth estimation module estimates a distance to an object reflecting the projection feature based on the transformation identified by the matching module.

Abstract: Real-time stereo matching is described, for example, to find depths of objects in an environment from an image capture device capturing a stream of stereo images of the objects. For example, the depths may be used to control augmented reality, robotics, natural user interface technology, gaming and other applications. Streams of stereo images, or single stereo images, obtained with or without patterns of illumination projected onto the environment are processed using a parallel-processing unit to obtain depth maps. In various embodiments a parallel-processing unit propagates values related to depth in rows or columns of a disparity map in parallel. In examples, the values may be propagated according to a measure of similarity between two images of a stereo pair; propagation may be temporal between disparity maps of frames of a stream of stereo images and may be spatial within a left or right disparity map.

Abstract: A surface reprojection codec and method for surface compression using non-redundant surface projection onto depth maps. A multiple depth map encoder takes a two-dimensional (2D) surface that is a representation of a three-dimensional (3D) object and divides it into a plurality of surface patches. Each of these surface patches is projected onto a depth map from a set of depth maps. This generates a set of converted depth maps. This set of converted depth maps then are encoded using standard encoding techniques. The encoded version of the 3D object may be stored, transmitted over a network, or both. A multiple depth map decoder decodes the set of converted depth maps to obtain the surface patches. These surface patches and connectivity information can be used to regenerate the 2D surface. The 2D surface in turn can be used to reconstruct the 3D object.