Depth from Defocus via Active Quasi-random Point Projections

Depth sensing has many practical applications in vision-relatedtasks. While many different depth measurement techniques existand depth camera technologies are constantly being advanced, activedepth sensing still rely on specialized hardware that are highlycomplex and costly. Motivated by this, we present a novel techniquefor inferring depth measurements via depth from defocus usingactive quasi-random point projection patterns. A quasi-randompoint projection pattern is projected onto the scene of interest, andeach projection point in the image captured by a camera is analysedusing a calibration model to estimate the depth at that point.The proposed method has a relatively simple setup, consisting of acamera and a projector, and enables depth inference from a singlecapture. Furthermore, the use of a quasi-random projection patterncan allow us to leverage compressive sensing theory to producefull depth maps in future applications. Experimental resultsshow the proposed system has strong potential for enabling activedepth sensing in a simple, efficient manner.