Yes. It's a fixed pattern of random dots to avoid the possible confusion of a repeating pattern.(The refered patent seems easier to read) http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?wo=2007043036&IA=IL2006000335&DISPLAY=DESC
My amateurish interpretation is "it's like structured light, except they shine a changing pattern of dots instead of a grid".
Basically, Kinect projects an image of dots into the scene and then measures the variation of the dots as indicative of the distance they have travelled. This also means :
...it looks like I was right regards the 3D camera's resolution. It's almost certainly a standard VGA or higher resolution CCD with the sampling consisting of 320 x 240 samples. This also means that the object surface is going to be a factor, as something that absorbs IR is going to give a false distance...Preferably, the system configuration is such that an average speckle feature size, Axcam, on a pixel plane of the imaging unit is at least two pixels.
In some configurations, the adjustor may be controlled to adjust illumination intensity to partially cancel/smooth the effect of the mapped objects on the brightness level received at the imaging unit, e.g. the effects being due to differences in reflection coefficient (albedo), distance, and surface properties. Such an adjustor may receive inputs from the imaging/control unit, and the intensity distribution to be projected in the plane transversal to the optical path of illuminating light propagation.
This is something TOF cameras won't have to worry about, and perhpas explains early problems with Natal regards imaging dark people (skin or clothing). I wonder if jewellery can throw it out?Could be wearing a shiny watch is a bad idea.