Arobotmustperceivethethree-dimensionalworldifitistobeeffective there. Yet recovering 3-D information from projected images is difficult, and still remains thesubjectofbasic research. Alternatively, onecan use sensorsthatcanprovidethree-dimensionalrangeinformationdirectly. The technique ofprojecting light-stripesstartedto be used in industrialobject recognition systems asearly asthe 1970s, andtime-of-flight laser-scanning range finders became available for outdoor mobile robotnavigation in the mid-eighties. Once range data are obtained, a vision system must still describe the scene in terms of 3-D primitives such as edges, surfaces, and volumes, and recognize objeCts of interest. Today, the art of sensing, extractingfeatures, and recognizing objectsbymeans ofthree-dimensional rangedataisoneofthemostexcitingresearchareasincomputervision. Three-Dimensional Machine Vision is a collection of papers dealing withthree-dimensionalrangedata. Theauthorsarepioneeringresearchers: some are founders and others are bringingnew excitements in thefield. I have tried to select milestone papers, and my goalhas beento make this bookareferenceworkforresearchersinthree-dimensionalvision. The book is organized into four parts: 3-D Sensors, 3-D Feature Extractions, ObjectRecognitionAlgorithms, andSystemsandApplications. Part I includes four papers which describe the development of unique, capable 3-D range sensors, as well as discussions of optical, geometrical, electronic, and computational issues. Mundy and Porter describe asensor systembasedonstructuredilluminationforinspectingmetalliccastings. In order to achieve high-speed data acquisition, it uses multiple lightstripes withwavelength multiplexing. Case, Jalkio, andKim alsopresentamulti- stripe system and discuss various design issues in range sensing by triangulation. ThenumericalstereocameradevelopedbyAltschuler, Bae, Altschuler, Dijak, Tamburino, and Woolford projects space-coded grid patterns which are generated by an electro-optical programmable spatial viii PREFACE light modulator. Kanade and Fuhrman present a proximity sensor using multipleLEDswhich areconically arranged. Itcan measurebothdistance andorientationofanobject'ssurface.
