High-speed stroboscope for specular reflection removal of DC illumination

Separation between specular reflection components and diffuse reflection components is an important subject in robotics and machine vision. Hence, the author´s group has developed a method to separate a diffuse image from an image of high-speed video with specular reflection components. The method is based on an estimation technique based on luminance variation due to flicker of a light with an AC source. However, the method has a serious issue that it is limited for lights with an AC source. This study gets rid of the limitation by implementing a high-speed strobe light to the camera and produce flickers by artificial means. Experimental results show the validity of the proposed method.