Distance measurement using single non-metric CCD camera

A novel measuring system based on a single non-metric CCD camera and a laser projector is proposed in this paper for measuring distance of a remote object. The setup of the measuring system is relatively easy, in which the laser pointer is positioned beside the CCD camera so that laser beam projected is parallel to the optical axis of the camera in a fixed distance. Based on a fast and effective algorithm proposed in this paper, the central position of the projected laser spot in images due to the laser beam can be accurately identified for calculating the distance of a targeted object according to an established formula. Because of the relationship of pixels counts of the diameter of the laser spot at different distances, processing of a sub-frame comprising a fraction of scan lines, rather than the whole image, is only required. Significant savings of computation time can therefore be achieved. Simulation results show satisfactory measurements can be obtained, where averaged absolute measurement errors via the proposed approach lie within 0.502%.