Abstract: Examples of time-of-flight (“TOF”) simulation of multipath light phenomena are described. For example, in addition to recording light intensity for a pixel during rendering, a graphics tool records the lengths (or times) and segment counts for light paths arriving at the pixel. Such multipath information can provide a characterization of the temporal light density of light that arrives at the pixel in response to one or more pulses of light. The graphics tool can use stratification and/or priority sampling to reduce variance in recorded light path samples. Realistic, physically-accurate simulation of multipath light phenomena can, in turn, help calibrate a TOF camera so that it more accurately estimates the depths of real world objects observed using the TOF camera. Various ways to improve the process of inferring imaging conditions such as depth, reflectivity, and ambient light based on images captured using a TOF camera are also described.

Abstract: An embodiment of the invention provides a time of flight three-dimensional TOF-3D camera that determines distance to features in a scene responsive to amounts of light from the scene registered by pixels during different exposure periods and an experimentally determined probabilistic model of how much light the pixels are expected to register during each of the different exposure periods.

Abstract: A system for surveillance of a region of interest. The system includes a number of monitors, each monitor operative to acquire and to transmit periodically a description of a respective portion of the region of interest. The monitors are operative to transmit the descriptions in a first communication channel with insufficient bandwidth for all the monitors to transmit the descriptions simultaneously. The system also includes a control station for allocating respective portions of the channel to the monitors for the transmissions according to a number of rules. One or more of the rules includes feedback from the monitors that is separate from the descriptions.