The projector beams black and white pixels at a scene and the camera captures the way the light bounces off objects in the scene. A computer algorithm monitors the data and changes the patterns to gain the needed information.
For example, how can one read a playing card that is facing away from the camera? "In the card experiment, the camera cannot see the card directly, but it can see the surface of the book [behind the card]; the light from the projector bounces off the card, then bounces off the book and hits the camera," said Pradeep Sen from Stanford University.
