Multiview Panoramic Cameras Using a Mirror Pyramid

  • Authors:
  • Kar-Han Tan;Hong Hua;Narendra Ahuja

  • Affiliations:
  • -;-;-

  • Venue:
  • OMNIVIS '02 Proceedings of the Third Workshop on Omnidirectional Vision
  • Year:
  • 2002

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Abstract

A mirror pyramid consists of a set of flat mirror faces arranged aroundan axis of symmetry, inclined to form a pyramid. By strategicallypositioning a number of conventional cameras around a mirror pyramid,the viewpoints for the individual cameras' mirror images can becolocated at a single point within the pyramid, effectively forming avirtual camera with a wide field of view. Mirror pyramid-based panoramiccameras have a number of attractive properties, includingsingle-viewpoint imaging, high resolution and video rate capture.Currently existing designs realize a single viewpoint within each mirrorpyramid.In order to capture panoramas from multiple viewpoints withthese designs, the entire physical setup would need to be relocated orduplicated. The former solution lacks the capability of video rateimaging, and the latter leads to bulky designs due to the multiplemirror pyramids. In this paper we propose a method for generalizingexisting designs such that multiple viewpoints can be created in asingle mirror pyramid. This enables simultaneous multiview panoramicvideo rate imaging with a compact design. We describe the generalizeddesign, the imaging geometry and the cameras' field of view(FOV), usingsimulations to illustrate the concepts. We also show the resultsobtained from an experimental prototype for two viewpoints.