Tracking Projection Mosaicing

Summary

Projectors have improved in resolution and brightness as information devices, however, static projectors suffer from a trade-off between the angle of projection and the resolution, and high-resolution projection in a wide area is difficult considering a gaze of an observer. Multiple projectors can improve the resolution by tiling vertically/horizontally or by duplicating the projection areas, but dynamic control of the high-resolution projection area is impossible due to the fixed projectors.

Here, we consider a projective expression with a large static image by controlling an optical axis of the high-resolution projection to a randomly moving point such as a gaze. In this expression, in addition to an imperceptible spacial misalignment (geometric consistency), high responsibility of the optical axis toward the dynamic point (tracking ability), and small motion-based artifacts (e.g., spacial misalignment, motion blur) against the optical axis control (temporal geometric consistency) are essential. Conventional researches did not fully satisfy the latter two conditions in particular.

In this research, we propose a tracking projection mosaicing system using a high-speed optical axis control and a high-speed projector (Fig. 1). This system is based on our two technologies; the high-speed optical axis controller (1ms Auto Pan-Tilt technology) and the high-speed projector DynaFlash that can project an image at 1,000 fps with minimum latency of 3 ms. By controlling these two high-speed devices with two types of synchronization strategies (Fig. 3, 4), tracking projection with the temporal geometric consistency can be realized. Actually, we performed the tracking projection mosaicing against a bright spot of a laser pointer (Fig. 2), which is expected to develop new applications such as adaptive visual expression for dynamic users.

Fig. 1 Configuration of the proposed method.	Fig. 2 Tracking projection mosaicing against a laser pointer.
Fig. 3 Synchronization with queue.	Fig. 4 Alternate synchronization.

Movie

Reference

1. Masashi Nitta, Tomohiro Sueishi, and Masatoshi Ishikawa: Tracking Projection Mosaicing by Synchronized High-speed Optical Axis Control, The 24th ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology (VRST2018) (Tokyo, 2018.11.29)/Proceedings, Article No. 13 [doi:10.1145/3281505.3281535] Honorable Mentions, Microsoft Award
2. Yoshihiro Watanabe, Gaku Narita, Sho Tatsuno, Takeshi Yuasa, Kiwamu Sumino, Masatoshi Ishikawa: High-speed 8-bit Image Projector at 1,000 fps with 3 ms Delay, The International Display Workshops (IDW2015), (Shiga, Japan, 2015.12.11)/Proceedings, pp.1064-1065, 2015.
3. Kohei Okumura, Keiko Yokoyama, Hiromasa Oku, and Masatoshi Ishikawa: 1 ms Auto Pan-Tilt - video shooting technology for objects in motion based on Saccade Mirror with background subtraction, Advanced Robotics, Vol.29, Issue 7, pp.457-468 (2015)