3D imaging with LEDs and smartphone points to simpler machine vision
20 Jan 2021
University of Strathclyde project creates images without complex synchronizing of camera and lighting.
Monkey seen: imaging with overhead LEDs
An approach to 3D imaging employing conventional LED room lighting and a smartphone could led to more straightforward visualization methods for industrial or security applications.
The new method has been developed by a team at the University of Strathclyde Institute of Photonics and Bristol Robotics Laboratory, in work supported by the UK EPSRC QuantIC research program. It represents an enhancement of photometric stereo (PS) imaging, in which a 3D image is built up from one fixed camera perspective and different illumination directions.
In 1970, a Japanese roboticist named Masahiro Mori described what he called the uncanny valley - a point on a graph relating human affinity for a machine to its likeness of humans themselves, where human affinity plummets as the likeness becomes nearly indistinguishable from ourselves. As robots become more humanlike, our fondness for them increases.
But when machines reach a point where they look so much like us that we can barely tell they re different from us, Mori postulated that we ll feel repulsed instead of affectionate. Since we haven t been able to produce robots that are nearly indistinguishable from humans yet, it s somewhat difficult to know whether Mori is correct. However, with a new empathetic humanoid robot, researchers at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory in the UK have brought us a step closer to the rim of the uncanny valley.