Dynamic Environment Imaging by High-speed and High-resolution Tracking of Mirror Sphere

Summary

We propose the method for high-speed dynamic imaging of surroundings using mirror sphere. Capturing textures of mirror sphere enables us to image all direction around the sphere instantaneously. If we can move the sphere freely, dynamic scene from various viewpoint could be captured. However, with fixed camera, this reduces the image resolution of the sphere significantly, because the field of view need to be sufficiently wide to capture whole space of the sphere movement. This problem can be solved by capturing a high-resolution image of a moving mirror sphere by tracking it using a high-speed gaze controller, Saccade Mirror, and high-speed visual feedback. By mounting high speed vision for visual feedback and a full-HD camera for monitoring, high resolution sphere images can be recorded. This method can be synthesize 1)the movie from the viewpoint of the center of sphere and 2)dynamic environment mapped 3D-CG image.

System overview of spherical mirror tracking	Outline of optical system of saccadic mirror

Movies

Refferences

1. Kohei Okumura, Hiromasa Oku and Masatoshi Ishikawa: Optical Gaze Control System to Realize More High-speed Active Vision, Journal of Robotics Society of Japan，Vol. 29，No. 2 (2011) [PDF (3.8MB)]