Shaped blurring of images for improved localization of point energy radiators
First Claim
1. An improvement in a system for determining the location of at least one point-like radiator of energy in a coordinate system by sensing the radiator using at least one camera containing an array of photosensitive pixels, in which the pixel location of the image of the radiator is determined, so that a radiator location computing means can calculate the location of the radiator itself within the coordinate system from the image location or locations, where the improved system comprises at least one said point-like energy radiator;
- at least one said camera comprising an image forming means, an image reshaping means, and a pixel array, wherein each pixel array is an array of energy sensitive detectors;
an image processing means to compute the location of the image of the radiator on each pixel array by identifying the center or some other reference point on the image to a precision of smaller than the size of each pixel; and
said radiator location computing means to calculate the location of the radiator in the coordinate system, given the subpixel location of each image and a calibration function mapping said radiator image locations to the radiator location.
0 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
The method of this invention, and any apparatus which implements it, improves the accuracy of determining the sub-pixel location of the image of a point-like radiator of energy (typically light). This method distributes the image of a point radiator of energy over detector pixels such that the number of image pixels with high intensity gradients is maximized, while it minimizes the energy wasted on pixels with low intensity gradients, which contribute little to the computation of the sub-pixel location of the image. By improving such accuracy in each of one or more cameras, the accuracy of deriving the spatial location of the energy radiator improves also.
17 Citations
46 Claims
-
1. An improvement in a system for determining the location of at least one point-like radiator of energy in a coordinate system by sensing the radiator using at least one camera containing an array of photosensitive pixels, in which the pixel location of the image of the radiator is determined, so that a radiator location computing means can calculate the location of the radiator itself within the coordinate system from the image location or locations, where the improved system comprises
at least one said point-like energy radiator; -
at least one said camera comprising an image forming means, an image reshaping means, and a pixel array, wherein each pixel array is an array of energy sensitive detectors;
an image processing means to compute the location of the image of the radiator on each pixel array by identifying the center or some other reference point on the image to a precision of smaller than the size of each pixel; and
said radiator location computing means to calculate the location of the radiator in the coordinate system, given the subpixel location of each image and a calibration function mapping said radiator image locations to the radiator location. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 21, 22)
-
- 18. The system of claim 18, wherein the geometrical entity is a straight line segment.
-
23. An improvement in a location measurement system, which system comprises
a coordinate system; -
at least one point-like radiator of energy within the coordinate system;
at least one energy sensor which forms an image of at least one radiator;
a image processor to find said image in the sensor and to calculate the location of said image in the sensor; and
a radiator location computer to calculate the location of each radiator relative to the coordinate system, given at least one image location and a calibration function mapping at least one said image location to a coordinate set representing the location in the coordinate system;
where said improvement comprises an image reshaping means in at least one said sensor, such that the image always covers at least 4 non-collinear pixels and the reshaping increases the number of pixels containing edges of the reshaped image compared to the original image by at least 50%;
such that the image processor is adapted to process a reshaped image generated from the original image by the image reshaping means. - View Dependent Claims (24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45)
-
-
46. A process for determining the location of a point-like radiator of energy in a coordinate space by forming the image of the radiator in at least one sensor, precisely determining the location of the image of the radiator therein, and calculating the location of the radiator itself within the coordinate system from at least one such image location, where the process comprises
placing a point-like energy radiator in said coordinate space; -
forming an image in at least one said sensor reshaping at least one such image processing the image to determine its location in the sensor by identifying the center or some other reference point on the image to a precision of smaller than the size of each pixel; and
computing said radiator location coordinates describing the location of the radiator in the coordinate space, when given the subpixel location of sufficient images and given a calibration function mapping the image locations of the sufficient images to the radiator location.
-
Specification