Abstract
A patent application by the inventor Blasch, Ian (Boise, ID, US), filed on December 15, 2020, was made available online on February 15, 2024, according to news reporting originating from Washington, D.C., by NewsRx correspondents. This patent application is assigned to Jabil Optics Germany GmbH (Jena, Germany). The following quote was obtained by the news editors from the background information supplied by the inventors: "3D depth imaging techniques can be broadly divided in wavefront-based imaging (phase imaging, PI) and ray-based imaging (ray imaging, RI). An actual review over these techniques is given in Chen et al. (Chen, N. et al., "3D Imaging Based on Depth Measurement Technologies", Sensors 18, 3711 (2018)). Many techniques have been developed in PI, including coherent diffraction imaging, phase retrieval, holography, wavefront-based light field imaging, time-of-flight (ToF), and structured-light. For RI, there are also a lot of techniques such as stereo imaging and (ray-based) light field imaging (stereo imaging can be regarded as an extreme light field imaging). "For 3D imaging systems or sensors which can capture depth data of objects in a surrounding of the system, typically light/laser detection and ranging (LiDAR/LaDAR), time-of-flight (ToF, direct and indirect versions), amplitude or frequency modulated illumination, structured light, etc. are used. Such systems are found in autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), industrial mobile robots (IMRs), and automated guided vehicles (AGVs) like lift trucks, forklifts, cars, drones, etc. to avoid collisions, to detect obstacles, for passenger monitoring and for observing keep-out-zones for machines and robots. These systems can also be used for collaborative robotics, security and surveillance camera applications.
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