OMNIDIRECTIONAL CAMERA

Few days back I came across this article which dealt with a camera with a 360 degree field of view. So the camera is called OMNIDIRECTIONAL CAMERA. Omnidirectional cameras are important in areas where large visual field coverage is needed, such as in photography or robotics. Here is some glimpse of that camera.

In photography, an omnidirectional camera (from omni,meaning all) is a camera with a 360-degree field-of-view. Omnidirectional cameras are important in areas where large visual field coverage is needed, such as in panoramic photography and robotics.

Overview

A camera normally has a field of view that ranges from a few degrees to, at most, 180 degrees. This means that it captures, at most, light falling onto the camera focal point through a semi-sphere. In contrast, an omnidirectional camera captures light from all directions falling onto the focal point, covering a full sphere. In practice, however, most omnidirectional cameras cover only almost the full sphere and many cameras which are refered to as omnidirectional cover only approximately a semi-sphere. In the case that they cover full sphere, the captured light rays typically do not intersect in a single focal point.

Applications

The picture shows the omni directional(360 degree) view of a corridor.

Panoramic art

Traditional approaches to panoramic photography mainly consists of stitching shots taken separately into a single, continuous image. The stitching of images, however, is computationally intensive and depending upon the quality and consistency of the shots used, the resulting image might contain a number of deficiencies which impair the quality of the resulting image. In contrast, an omnidirectional camera can be used to create panoramic art in real time, without the need for post processing, and will typically give much better quality products.

Robotics and computer vision

In robotics, omnidirectional cameras are frequently used for visual odometry and to solve the Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) problems visually.Due to its ability to capture a 360-degree view, better results can be obtained for optical flowand feature selection and matching.

Miscellaneous

Appliations of omnidirectional cameras also include surveillance, when it is important to cover an as large visual field as possible, teleconferencing, where it is of interest to include as many participants as possible in the same image.