Structured light application

I’ve long thought that structured light is an underused technique for extracting information about surfaces, yet when I raise this point I’m often met with blank faces.

Perhaps this paper, “Analyzing carpet wear” by a team from Ghent University in Belgium (published on the SPIE website, July 6th, 2010) will help to spread the word. It describes an effort to quantify carpet wear by using structured light to create a 3D image. Apparently this is very important to the makers of carpet who at present judge wear by human eye.