Hemispherical Multiple Camera System for High Resolution Omni-Directional Light Field Imaging

Inspiration from light field imaging concepts has led to the construction of multi-aperture imaging systems. Using multiple cameras as individual apertures is a topic of high relevance in the light field imaging domain. The need for wide field-of-view (FOV) and high-resolution video for applications in areas of surveillance, robotics and automotive systems has driven the idea of omni-directional vision. Recently, the Panoptic camera concept has been presented that mimics the eyes of flying insects using multiple imagers. The Panoptic camera utilizes a novel methodology for constructing a spherically arranged wide FOV plenoptic imaging system whereas omni-directional image quality is limited by low resolution sensors. In this paper, a very-high resolution light field imaging and recording system inspired from the Panoptic approach is presented. Major challenges consisting of managing the huge amount of data as well as maintaining a scalable system are addressed. The proposed system is capable of recording omni-directional video at 30 fps with a resolution exceeding 9000 by 2400 pixels. The system is capable of capturing the surrounding light field in a FOV. This important feature opens the door to various post processing techniques such as quality-enhanced 3D cinematography, very high resolution depth map estimation and high dynamic-range applications which are beyond standard stitching and panorama generation.