Stereo imaging inspired by bionic optics.

Abstract

Stereo imaging has been a focal point in fields such as robotics and autonomous driving. This Letter discusses the imaging mechanisms of jumping spiders and human eyes from a biomimetic perspective and proposes a monocular stereo imaging solution with low computational cost and high stability. The stereo imaging mechanism of jumping spiders enables monocular imaging without relying on multiple viewpoints, thus avoiding complex large-scale feature point matching and significantly conserving computational resources. The foveal imaging mechanism of the human eye allows for complex imaging tasks to be completed only on the locally interested regions, resulting in more efficient execution of various visual tasks. By combining these two advantages, we have developed a more computationally efficient monocular stereo imaging method that can achieve stereo imaging on only the locally interested regions without sacrificing the performance of wide field-of-view (FOV) imaging. Finally, through experimental validation, we demonstrate that the method proposed in this Letter exhibits excellent stereo imaging performance.