Chris Osterwood, Chief Technical Officer at Carnegie Robotics, presents the "How to Choose a 3D Vision Technology" tutorial at the May 2017 Embedded Vision Summit.
Designers of autonomous vehicles, robots, and many other systems are faced with a critical challenge: Which 3D perception technology to use? There are a wide variety of sensors on the market, employing modalities including passive stereo, active stereo, time of flight, 2D and 3D lasers, and monocular approaches. This talk provides an overview of 3D sensor technologies and their capabilities and limitations, based on Carnegie Robotics’ experience selecting the right 3D technology and sensor for a diverse range of autonomous robot designs.
There is no perfect sensor technology and no perfect sensor, but there is always a sensor which best aligns with the requirements of your application — you just need to find it. Osterwood describes a quantitative and qualitative evaluation process for 3D sensors, including testing processes using both controlled environments and field testing, and some surprising characteristics and limitations that his company has uncovered through that testing.
