Simulating an infrared emitter array in a video monitoring camera to construct a lookup table for depth determination

Abstract

A process generates lookup tables for estimating spatial depth in a scene. The process identifies subsets of illuminators of a camera system that has a 2-dimensional array of image sensors and illuminators in fixed locations relative to the array, and partitions the image sensors into a plurality of pixels. For each pixel, and for each of m distinct depths from the respective pixel, the process simulates a virtual surface at the respective depth. For each of the subsets of illuminators, the process determines an expected light intensity at the pixel based on the respective depth. The process forms an intensity vector using the expected light intensities for each of the distinct subsets and normalizes the intensity vector. For each pixel, the process constructs a lookup table comprising the normalized vectors corresponding to the pixel. The lookup table associates each normalized vector with the depth of the corresponding simulated surface.