Apple’s new TrueDepth camera for the iPhone X sure is impressive but it also sounds familiar. It works by using a projector to cast 30,000 dots on your face, which it then reads with an infrared camera. This sounds much like how the Microsoft Kinect works.
The dots used in structured light 3D vision
The Kinect uses several approaches to get a good 3D image. One is called structured light – the projection of a known pattern of dots and using machine learning to reconstruct a 3D scene. This is done with a dot projector and an IR camera, same as on the iPhone X.
But a regular color…