Development of a compact video-rate range finder using RGB signals from binocular CCD color cameras

This paper describes a compact video-rate range finder to be used in autonomous vehicles and intelligent robots, and as a vision substitutes for visually impaired people. The device, being composed of binocular CCD color cameras and a simplified electric circuit, can efficiently extract only the colors of red and blue from a scene, and can provide 3-D distance information continuously within object contours. This device was applied to the measurement of motion of a human body and the estimation of rotation diameter, rotation plane, trajectory, and fluctuation of a rotating body. It was confirmed that this device can be applied to real-time measurements of 3-D spatial positions and motion of objects.