Monthly Archives: January 2015

Contrast Agents for Viewing Transparent Objects in IR

If an object is not visible in IR, sensors such as the Kinect or an IR range finder cannot see it.  To address this problem we have developed a technique for applying a temporary contrast agent to image the object in IR.  We scan the object with the contrast agent to obtain a high-quality depth map.  After the contrast agent is removed, we localize the object with vision and incorporate the high-quality depth information based on the visual pose estimate.   This video shows our preferred method for applying the contrast agent.