Compact omnidirectional multi-stereo vision system for 3D reconstruction

Appl Opt. 2018 Dec 1;57(34):9929-9935. doi: 10.1364/AO.57.009929.

Abstract

Omnidirectional stereovision is beneficial in wide applications due to its large field of view. Traditional implementation of such a system employs two separate cameras looking at separate mirrors to achieve 3D stereo reconstruction. In this paper, a compact omnidirectional multi-stereo system that consists of only one camera and multiple mirrors is proposed. The novelty lies in the designing of a principal mirror above the array of sub-mirrors to achieve multiple omnidirectional stereo pairs that have appropriate baselines and multiple viewpoints in a compact manner. The system's imaging projection and error propagation model are presented. Experiments based on simulation and real data verify the effectiveness of our system.