Technical Keynote: High-Speed 3D Optical Sensing and Information Processing for Automotive Industry

Advances in optical imaging and machine/computer vision have provided integrated smart sensing systems for the manufacturing industry; and advanced 3D sensing could have profound impact in numerous fields, with broader applications including automotive industry. Our research addresses the challenges in high-speed, high-resolution 3D sensing and optical information processing. For example, we have developed a system that simultaneously captures, processes and displays 3D geometries at 30 Hz with over 300,000 measurement points per frame, which was unprecedented at that time (a decade ago). Our current research focuses on achieving speed breakthroughs by developing the binary defocusing techniques; and exploring novel means to store enormously large 3D data by innovating geometry/video compression methods. The binary defocusing methods coincide with the inherent operation mechanism of the digital-light-processing (DLP) technology, permitting tens of kHz 3D imaging speed at camera pixel spatial resolution. The novel methods of converting 3D data to regular 2D counterparts offer us the opportunity to leverage mature 2D data compression platform, achieving extremely high compression ratios without reinventing the whole data compression infrastructure. In this talk, I will present two platform technologies: 1) high-speed 3D optical sensing; and 2) real-time 3D video communication. I will also discuss how such platform technologies could benefit the automotive industry including in-situ quality control of additive manufacturing, perception/sensing for autonomous vehicle systems, human robot collaboration in smart factories, along with others.