The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jul. 04, 2017
Filed:
Nov. 14, 2013
E2v Semiconductors, Saint-Égrève, FR;
E2V SEMICONDUCTORS, Saint-Égrève, FR;
Abstract
The invention relates to the production of images associating with each point of the image a depth, i.e. a distance between the observed point and the camera that produced the image. A light source emits N trains of light pulses. For each train of rank I=1 to N, charge is integrated in a short time slot of length Tthat starts with a temporal offset trelative to the pulse, this temporal offset representing a journey time of the light pulse between the light source and the sensor after reflection from a point placed a distance dfrom the sensor. The temporal offset tis the same for all the light pulses of the ipulse train but the temporal offsets tof the N trains are different from one another in order to correspond to various distances relative to the sensor. The charge photogenerated by the pulses of a given train is accumulated; then the accumulated charge is read in order to produce an image of rank i representing the pixels located at the distance d. The observation of a scene comprises producing N different images by virtue of which it is possible to associate a distance with each pixel.