Demonstration of real-time structured-light depth sensing based on a solid-state VCSEL beam scanner

• Published in: Optics express Vol. 30; no. 1; pp. 364 - 376
• Main Authors: Ruixiao, Li, Shanting, Hu, Xiaodong, Gu, Koyama, Fumio
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States 03.01.2022
• ISSN: 1094-4087; 1094-4087
• DOI: 10.1364/OE.448506

We demonstrated a real-time scanning structured-light depth sensing system based on a solid-state vertical cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) beam scanner integrated with an electro-thermally tunable VCSEL. Through a swept voltage added to the tunable VCSEL, a field of view of 6°×12° could be scanned with a scanning speed of 100 kHz by the beam scanner. Adopting the beam scanner, the real-time depth image with a lateral resolution of 10,000 (20×500) was obtained by measuring a step target placed at 35cm. The frame rate could be >10Hz even if sunlight shot noise is artificially added to the experimental data. By using a higher-speed camera, a potential lateral resolution could be reached at 50,000 (100×500) with a frame rate of > 20Hz. By using flat optics, a compact scanning module offering line pattern with FoV of >40°×20° was also demonstrated. It could help to realize high-resolution and high-accuracy structured-light sensing with a compact module.