For the past few decades, structured light has been gaining popularity across various research fields. Its fascinating properties have been exploited for both previously unforeseen and established applications from new perspectives. Crucial to this is the several techniques that have been proposed for both their generation and characterization. On the one hand, the former has been boosted by the invention of computer-controlled devices, which combined with a few optical components allow flexible and complete control of the spatial and polarization degrees of freedom on light, thus enabling a plethora of proof-of-principle experiments for novel and old applications. On the other hand, characterizing light beams is important not only for gaining better insights into light's properties but also for potentially being used as metrics. In this perspective, we thus offer our take on a few key applied research fields where structured light is particularly promising, as well as some pivotal generation and characterization techniques. In addition, we share our vision of where we believe structured light's applications are moving toward.

中文翻译：

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结构光应用的观点


在过去的几十年里，结构光在各个研究领域越来越受欢迎。其迷人的特性已被用于以前无法预见的和从新角度建立的应用中。对此至关重要的是已经提出的几种技术用于它们的生成和表征。一方面，前者受到计算机控制设备的发明的推动，该设备与一些光学元件相结合，可以灵活和完全地控制光的空间和偏振自由度，从而为新颖和旧的应用进行大量的原理验证实验。另一方面，表征光束不仅对于更好地了解光的特性很重要，而且可能被用作指标。因此，从这个角度来看，我们对结构光特别有前途的几个关键应用研究领域，以及一些关键的生成和表征技术提出了我们的看法。此外，我们对结构光应用的发展方向有着共同的愿景。