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Multiview Mirror Pyramid Panoramic Cameras

Kar-Han Tan
Department of Computer Science
Hong Hua
Beckman Fellow
Narendra Ahuja
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign


Introduction

Panoramic images and video are useful in many applications such as special effects, immersive virtual reality environments, and video games. Among the numerous devices proposed for capturing panoramas, mirror pyramid-based camera systems are a promising approach for video rate capture, as they offer single-viewpoint imaging, and use only flat mirrors that are easier to produce than curved mirrors. To date, the designs proposed typically capture panoramas from a single viewpoint.

 

Mirror Pyramid Cameras

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A mirror pyramid consists of a set of flat mirror faces arranged around an axis of symmetry, inclined to form a pyramid. By strategically positioning a number of conventional cameras around a mirror pyramid, the viewpoints for the individual cameras’ mirror images can be colocated at a single point within the pyramid, effectively forming a virtual camera with a wide field of view.

Mirror pyramid-based panoramic cameras have a number of attractive properties, including 

  • single-viewpoint imaging, 
  • high resolution, and 
  • video rate capture. 

Currently existing designs realize a single viewpoint within each mirror pyramid. In order to capture panoramas from multiple viewpoints with these designs, the entire physical setup would need to be relocated or duplicated. The former solution lacks the capability of video rate imaging, and the latter leads to bulky designs due to the multiple mirror pyramids.

In our paper we proposed a method for generalizing existing designs such that multiple viewpoints can be created in a single mirror pyramid. This enables simultaneous multiview panoramic video rate imaging with a compact design.

 

(a) (b) (c)
Figure 1. Variation in the physical camera position with viewpoint position. (a) Viewpoint is centered in four-sided pyramid, shown with the corresponding eight camera positions. (b) Translated viewpoints marked A, B, and C are shown with correspondingly marked physical camera positions. (c) Same as (b), but with a mirror pyramid with a large number of faces to show how the shape changes as the viewpoint translates.

 

Experimental Setup

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(a) (b)

Figure 2. The experimental multiview panoramic camera. (a) The conceptual design. (b) The physical implementation utilizing four cameras and two mirror faces to produce two views.

 

Results

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(a) (b)

Figure 3. Experimental results. (a) Images captured by the four conventional cameras, after correcting for radial distortion. (b) The mosaiced views.
 

Reference

Kar-Han Tan, Hong Hua, and Narendra Ahuja. Multiview Mirror Pyramid Cameras.
IEEE Transactions in Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence. To appear.
Download Manuscript: [PDF]
PowerPoint: [ZIP]


 

Contact Information

Kar-Han Tan

e-mail: tankh at vision.ai.uiuc.edu
Phone: 

217-244-4392 (lab)
217-333-1869 (office)
Address: 
Beckman Institute
405 N Mathews Ave
Urbana IL 61801

 

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Chunyu Gao and John M. Hart for their help and many helpful suggestions.

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