xTrack: A Flexible Real-time 3D Scanner for Home Computing Applications

Obtaining realistic three-dimensional (3D) representations of objects is one of the key research topics in Computer Vision. The applications of such researches, in fact, are multifaceted and range from serious scenarios, such as medical imaging systems, to leisure ones, including entertainment systems which support filmmaking (e.g., 3D movies such as Avatar), gaming (e.g., Microsoft Kinect) and music (e.g., House of Cards video by Radiohead), citing here only a few. Several techniques have been employed in the past three decades to acquire 3D information from generic objects: photogrammetry, stereovision, holography, time-of-flight cameras, interferometry and structured light, among others. Many of such techniques are capable of providing 3D information with high fidelity, and are also apt to track any surface movements with great precision and great performances, but often require the use of specialized and proprietary hardware and software. We here present a system that prevents from falling into such a nuisance, as it is based on existing 3D information extraction algorithms and solely requires off-the-shelf devices: a projector, a webcam and a notebook. In addition, the proposed system avoids the fall of any complexity on users' shoulders, as all settings and tuning procedures are implemented in software.