The ModelCamera: a hand-held device for interactive modeling

An important goal of automated modeling is to provide computer graphics applications with high quality models of complex real-world scenes. Prior systems have one or more of the following disadvantages: slow modeling pipeline, applicability restricted to small scenes, no direct color acquisition, and high cost. We describe a hand-held scene modeling device that operates at five frames per second and that costs $2,000. The device consists of a digital video camera with 16 laser pointers attached to it. As the operator scans the scene, the pointers cast blobs that are detected and triangulated to provide sparse, evenly spaced depth samples. The frames are registered and merged into an evolving model, which is rendered continually to provide immediate operator feedback.