Integrated Sensing: Acquisition, Compression and Interpolation of Panoramic Stereo Images of a Scene for Remote Walkthroughs

University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign, Urbana IL

Investigators

Abstract

This proposal is aimed at producing novel images of a scene from arbitrary new viewpoints using a sparse set of compressed panoramic snapshots or sample images of the scene. The samples are taken from a relatively small number of strategically placed cameras. A major application and evaluation testbed of the proposed work is to enable walkthroughs of a 3D scene by generating the images of the scene along a trajectory dynamically chosen by a remote user. The focus of the proposed work is on the acquisition of panoramic stereo images which serve as scene samples, and their interpolation (or extrapolation) for producing a new stereo pair of images of the scene from an arbitrary new viewpoint. The user follows a dynamically chosen arbitrary trajectory and wishes to continuously teleview the scene from along the trajectory points. It is assumed that relative locations of the objects in the scene for which walkthroughs are to be generated are known; the object locations are sparse; and that the strategic placement of the cameras does not change significantly to warrant camera replacement. Development and implementation of a stereo panoramic camera is proposed. Limited work is proposed on joint image compression. The topology of the camera network also allows the determination of which cameras are to be used to generate the walkthrough image at any given point along the user drawn trajectory. Applications of the proposed work include video surveillance, virtual museums and video conferencing.