Enhanced Omnidirectional Image Reconstruction Algorithm and its Real-Time Hardware

Omnidirectional stereoscopy and depth estimation are complex problems of image processing to which the Panoptic camera offers a novel solution. The Panoptic camera is a biologically-inspired vision sensor made of multiple cameras. It is a polydioptric system mimicking the eyes of flying insects where multiple imagers, each with a distinct focal point, are distributed over a hemisphere. Recently, the omnidirectional image reconstruction algorithm (OIR) and its real-time hardware implementation have been proposed for the Panoptic camera. This paper presents an enhanced omnidirectional image reconstruction algorithm (EOIR) and its real-time implementation. The proposed EOIR algorithm provides improved realistic omnidirectional images and residuals compared to OIR. As a processing core of EOIR, 57% of the available slice resources in a Virtex 5 FPGA are consumed. The proposed platform provides the high bandwidth required to simultaneously process data originating from 40 cameras, and reconstruct omnidirectional images of 256x1024 pixels at 25 fps. This proposed hardware and algorithmic enhancements enable advanced real-time applications including omnidirectional image reconstruction, 3D model construction and depth estimation.