Why can't we purchase a perfect single shot 3D-sensor?

Gerd Häusler, Christian Faber, Florian Willomitzer, Philipp Dienstbier
  1. Institut für Optik, Information und Photonik, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg

gerd [dot] haeusler [at] physik [dot] uni-erlangen [dot] de

Many high quality 3D-sensors are available. Surprisingly, there are no sensors at the market that deliver "single-shot acquisition" and at the same time measurement of "dense surface data" in 3D-space. "Single-shot acquisition" means the option to get 3D-data within one single exposure, which would allow for real time 3D-data acquisition of moving objects by moving sensors. By "dense 3D-data" we mean, that each pixel carries individually measured distance information, neither interpolated from its neighbor pixels nor using any other kind of lateral (bandwidth limiting) context information. To our knowledge, a sensor that combines both features is not yet available. Why? Is such a "pixel-dense single-shot 3D-camera" possible at all? The discussion will reveal surprising insights about information theoretical differences between optical 3D-sensing and 2D-imaging. Understanding these differences and limits provokes thoughts about a novel sensor single-shot principle that may overcome the fundamental difficulty.

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@inproceedings{haeusler2012a8,
  author     = {Häusler, Gerd and Faber, Christian and Willomitzer, Florian and Dienstbier, Philipp},
  title      = {{Why can't we purchase a perfect single shot 3D-sensor?}},
  booktitle  = {DGaO-Proceedings 2012},
  series     = {DGaO-Proceedings},
  eventtitle = {113. Jahrestagung der DGaO},
  eventdate  = {2012-05-30/2012-06-02},
  venue      = {Eindhoven},
  publisher  = {Deutsche Gesellschaft für angewandte Optik e.V.},
  year       = {2012},
  pages      = {A8},
  langid     = {english},
  url        = {https://dgao-proceedings.de/paper/113-a8}
}
113. Jahrestagung der DGaO · Eindhoven · 2012