Omnidirectional Panoramic Video System With Frame-by-Frame Ultrafast Viewpoint Control

Abstract

This study developsan omnidirectional panoramic video system that can simultaneously observe zoom-in images at dozens of different viewpoints in a <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$360^{\circ }$</tex-math></inline-formula> field of view by synchronizing hundreds of frames per second video shooting, with a rotation of tens-of-rotation-per-second mirror-rotator. When video shooting a scene with a certain exposure utilizing a mirror-rotator, apparent motion in the captured images becomes too large to observe non-blurred images, owing to its high-speed rotation. To reduce motion blurs caused by the rotation of a mirror-rotator, our system introduces an ultrafast pan-tilt mirror mechanism that can cancel apparent motion in images by executing frame-by-frame viewpoint control, so that the apparent speed in images becomes zero when the camera shutter is open, and it returns to its home position when the shutter is closed. Our system can capture 40 omnidirectionally different view images at 10 fps in real time by synchronizing 400-fps video shooting with frame-by-frame ultrafast pan-tilt mirror control for motion blur reduction when a mirror-rotator rotates at 10 rps. Its performance is verified by experimental results for several omnidirectional real scenes, and our system can capture clear and bright panoramic zoom-in images without decreasing the camera exposure when omnidirectionally observing dozens-of-meters-distance outdoor scenes.