A New Aproach to Active Illumination

The design and development of a versatile active illumination system is described. The necessary system components are related to existing techniques which utilise various forms of structured light to extract range data. The system is composed of a high power stroboscopic illuminator coupled with a high resolution liquid crystal display and a precision actuated mirror. A colour filtering device enables projection colour control. The performance of a prototype system is demonstrated through application to temporal modulation, a range finding technique which relies heavily on the performance of the illuminating system.