High-speed three-dimensional shape measurement based on cyclic complementary Gray-code light

The binary defocusing technique has been widely used in high-speed three-dimensional (3D) shape measurement because it breaks the bottlenecks in high-speed fringe projection and the projector's nonlinear response. However, it is challenging for this method to realize a two- or multi-frequency phase-shifting algorithm because it is difficult to simultaneously generate high-quality sinusoidal fringe patterns with different periods under the same defocusing degree. To bypass this challenge, we proposed a high-speed 3D shape measurement technique for dynamic scenes based on cyclic complementary Gray-code (CCGC) patterns. In this proposed method, the projected phase-shifting sinusoidal fringes kept one same frequency, which is beneficial to ensure the optimum defocusing degree for binary dithering technique. The wrapped phase can be calculated by phase-shifting algorithm and unwrapped with the aid of complementary Gray-code (CGC) patterns in a simple and robust way. Then, the cyclic coding strategy further extends the unambiguous phase measurement range and improves the measurement accuracy compared with the traditional Gray-coding strategy under the condition of the same number of projected patterns. High-quality 3D results of three complex dynamic scenes-including a cooling fan and a standard ceramic ball with a free-falling table tennis, collapsing building blocks, and impact of the Newton's cradle-were demonstrated at a frame rate of 357 fps. This verified the proposed method's feasibility and validity.