Abstract
Array cameras removed the optical limitations of a single camera and paved the way for high-performance imaging via the combination of micro-cameras and computation to fuse multiple aperture images. However, existing solutions use dense arrays of cameras that require laborious calibration and lack flexibility and practicality. Inspired by the cognition function principle of the human brain, we develop an unstructured array camera system that adopts a hierarchical modular design with multiscale hybrid cameras composing different modules. Intelligent computations are designed to collaboratively operate along both intra- and intermodule pathways. This system can adaptively allocate imagery resources to dramatically reduce the hardware cost and possesses unprecedented flexibility, robustness, and versatility. Large scenes of real-world data were acquired to perform human-centric studies for the assessment of human behaviours at the individual level and crowd behaviours at the population level requiring high-resolution long-term monitoring of dynamic wide-area scenes.
Highlights
UnstructuredCam, with hierarchical topology and flexible structures. It was designed for high-performance imaging, consisting of one global camera for capturing a large FoV and multiple local cameras for capturing local highresolution details (Fig. 2a)
An overlapping region between neighbouring cameras is no longer required because the hierarchical topology enables a Global camera Local camera Intramodule collaboration b
The imaging system was inspired by the fact that brain function or cognition can be described as the global integration of local neuronal operations that underlies the sharing of information among cortical areas, which is precisely facilitated by modular hierarchical network architecture
Summary
Array cameras, which are an effective solution to increase the aperture area and overcome the optical aberrations of single-lens cameras, have been extensively studied for highperformance imaging[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13], including wide-field high-resolution imaging[3,4,5], high dynamic range imaging[5,14], and high frame-rate imaging[5]. The secondary imaging system used multiple identical microoptics to divide the whole FOV into small overlapping regions. It substantially reduced the size and weight of gigapixel-scale optical systems. The volume and weight of the camera electronics in video operation was more than 10× greater than that of the optics[3]. This system required a delicate structured array camera design, raising challenges with the complex optical, electronic, and mechanical designs. Laborious calibration and massive data processing were needed[4,7]
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