A conical panoramic stereo imaging system for 3-d scene reconstruction

The concept of a "conical panorama" was introduced in an earlier paper, involving the view of an oblique down-look camera rotating about an axis, either directly through or at some distance from the center of projection. This provides the framework 1) to analyze multi-camera realizations developed for various underwater visual tasks, and 2) to develop methods for the computation of visual motion that are more robust relative to processing of images covering a finite field of view. This paper presented a stereo conical imaging system, comprising 12 cameras with relatively large overlap between pairs of neighboring cameras. This panoramic stereovision system is targeted for 3-D visualization and improved scene reconstruction by utilizing correspondences in more than 2 views of the scene at modest distances. The calibration of the system is addressed, and experimental results demonstrate the potential in the use of this system for 3-D mapping.