TY - JOUR
T1 - Multiview panoramic cameras using mirror pyramids
AU - Tan, Kar Han
AU - Hua, Hong
AU - Ahuja, Narendra
N1 - Funding Information:
The support of the US National Science Foundation under Grants ITR 0083037 and ECS 02-25523 is gratefully acknowledged. Hong Hua is also supported by a Beckman Institute Fellowship. The authors would like to thank Chunyu Gao and John M. Hart for their help and suggestions.
PY - 2004/7
Y1 - 2004/7
N2 - A mirror pyramid consists of a set of planar mirror faces arranged around an axis of symmetry and inclined to form a pyramid. By strategically positioning a number of conventional cameras around a mirror pyramid, the viewpoints of the cameras' mirror images can be located at a single point within the pyramid and their optical axes pointed in different directions to effectively form a virtual camera with a panoramic field of view. Mirror pyramid-based panoramic cameras have a number of attractive properties, including single-viewpoint imaging, high resolution, and video rate capture. It is also possible to place multiple viewpoints within a single mirror pyramid, yielding compact designs for simultaneous multiview panoramic video rate imaging. Nalwa [4] first described some of the basic ideas behind mirror pyramid cameras. In this paper, we analyze the general class of multiview panoramic cameras, provide a method for designing these cameras, and present experimental results using a prototype we have developed to validate single-pyramid multiview designs. We first give a description of mirror pyramid cameras, including the imaging geometry, and investigate the relationship between the placement of viewpoints within the pyramid and the cameras' field of view (FOV), using simulations to illustrate the concepts. A method for maximizing sensor utilization in a mirror pyramid-based multiview panoramic camera is also presented. Images acquired using the experimental prototype for two viewpoints are shown.
AB - A mirror pyramid consists of a set of planar mirror faces arranged around an axis of symmetry and inclined to form a pyramid. By strategically positioning a number of conventional cameras around a mirror pyramid, the viewpoints of the cameras' mirror images can be located at a single point within the pyramid and their optical axes pointed in different directions to effectively form a virtual camera with a panoramic field of view. Mirror pyramid-based panoramic cameras have a number of attractive properties, including single-viewpoint imaging, high resolution, and video rate capture. It is also possible to place multiple viewpoints within a single mirror pyramid, yielding compact designs for simultaneous multiview panoramic video rate imaging. Nalwa [4] first described some of the basic ideas behind mirror pyramid cameras. In this paper, we analyze the general class of multiview panoramic cameras, provide a method for designing these cameras, and present experimental results using a prototype we have developed to validate single-pyramid multiview designs. We first give a description of mirror pyramid cameras, including the imaging geometry, and investigate the relationship between the placement of viewpoints within the pyramid and the cameras' field of view (FOV), using simulations to illustrate the concepts. A method for maximizing sensor utilization in a mirror pyramid-based multiview panoramic camera is also presented. Images acquired using the experimental prototype for two viewpoints are shown.
KW - Catadioptric systems
KW - Mirror pyramids
KW - Multiview panoramic imaging
KW - Omnidirectional imaging and video capture
KW - Panoramic cameras
KW - Stereoscopic cameras
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U2 - 10.1109/TPAMI.2004.33
DO - 10.1109/TPAMI.2004.33
M3 - Article
C2 - 18579952
AN - SCOPUS:3042536897
SN - 0162-8828
VL - 26
SP - 941
EP - 946
JO - IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence
JF - IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence
IS - 7
ER -