A New Range Finding Method Using a Varifocal Mirror

A new range finding method is proposed in this paper which makes use of a varifocal mirror. The three-dimensional object space is first discretized into a sequence of spherical shells with a specially designed nonlinear vibrating varifocal mirror. These discrete spherical shell images are then recorded by a video camera. A deblurring algorithm is introduced in this paper which is used to remove the blurred components in the images. Different depth ranges can be obtained by controlling the vibration amplitude and the direct current component of the driving wave for the varifocal mirror. The depth accuracy is adjusted by varying the vibration period of the varifocal mirror. This range finding technique can be made real time by increasing the frame frequency of the camera.