A larger weekness of 3D from stereo is the presence of areas without contrast. One solution would be striped illumination. To suppress the background one would use synchronized flashing, preferably infrared. In order to do that one normally synchronizes the flash with the camera and for that purpose many industrial cameras offer a hardware signal. Then you would either make the flash so bright that the background illumination is not important or you would make two images of a static scene and substract the one without the structured illumination from the one with it.
I find it rather a big problem that the current set of cameras does not offer such a sync signal, particularly since it is surely available inside the camera in order to sync both eyes. A single opto-couple and a resistor would be all that is needed …
Thanks for the feedback!
New capture cards are actually coming in the next months (mono and quad) that will support hardware synchronization with external trigger/strobe.
Thanks for the fast reaction. We are looking to build a solution that is competitive in features and price. Your SDK is a great start and I must say that after many frustrations with the quality of the SDKs, examples and support of other people the user experience with you is really great so far. The OpenGL is a bit tough to get used to, but that’s not your fault :-). The other missing piece to a perfect world is a set of ToF cameras that integrate with your stereo vision in such a way that high precision and high point density are combined … and of course fusion is still incomplete, but hey :-).
To answer the question: We try to build with Jetson and I’m not sure if those cards are intended for that platform. The other question is the wirering as the illumination is usually close to the camera (not necessarily though). But yes, I’m looking forward to those new products. Great news!