Environmental Effects on Measurement Uncertainties of Time-of-Flight Cameras

Abstract — In this paper the effect the environment has on the SwissRanger SR3000 Time-Of-Flight camera is investigated. The accuracy of this camera is highly affected by the scene it is pointed at: Such as the reflective properties, color and gloss. Also the complexity of the scene has considerable effects on the accuracy. To mention a few: The angle of the objects to the emitted light and the scattering effects of near objects. In this paper a general overview of known such inaccuracy factors are described, followed by experiments illustrating the additional uncertainty factors. Specifically we give a better description of how a surface color intensity influences the depth measurement, and illustrate how multiple reflections influence the resulting depth measurement. I