A 3D imaging and mapping system that can handle both multiple-viewers and dynamic-objects is attractive for many applications. We propose a freeform structured light system that does not rigidly constrain camera(s) to the projector. By introducing an optimized phase-coded aperture in the projector, we transform the projector pattern to encode depth in its defocus robustly; this allows a camera to estimate depth, in projector coordinates, using local information. Additionally, we project a Kronecker-multiplexed pattern that provides global context to establish correspondence between camera and projector pixels. Together with aperture coding and projected pattern, the projector offers a unique 3D labeling for every location of the scene. The projected pattern can be observed in part or full by any camera, to reconstruct both the 3D map of the scene and the camera pose in the projector coordinates. This system is optimized using a fully differentiable rendering model and a CNN-based reconstruction. We build a prototype and demonstrate high-quality 3D reconstruction with an unconstrained camera, for both dynamic scenes and multi-camera systems.
@inproceedings{wu2020freecam3d,
title={FreeCam3D: Snapshot Structured Light 3D with Freely-Moving Cameras},
author={Wu, Yicheng and Boominathan, Vivek and Zhao, Xuan and Robinson, Jacob T and Kawasaki, Hiroshi and Sankaranarayanan, Aswin and Veeraraghavan, Ashok},
booktitle={European Conference on Computer Vision},
pages={309--325},
year={2020},
organization={Springer}
}