OMNIDIRECTIONAL SENSOR ARRAY SYSTEM

• US 20140146132A1
• Filed: 10/31/2011
• Published: 05/29/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 10/29/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Ecole polytechnique fãdãrale de lausanne epfl (Schweizerische Eidgenossenschaft)
• Original Assignee: Ecole polytechnique fãdãrale de lausanne epfl (Schweizerische Eidgenossenschaft)
• Inventors: Vandergheynst, Pierre, Leblebici, Yusuf, Bagnato, Luigi, Jacques, Laurent, Afshari, Hossein, Schmid, Alexandre
• Granted Patent: US 9,876,953 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 348/36
• CPC Class Codes: G02B 30/34 Stereoscopes providing a stereoscopic pair of separated images corresponding to parallactically displaced views of the same object, e.g. 3D slide viewers
• CPC Class Codes: G03B 35/08 by simultaneous recording
• CPC Class Codes: G03B 37/04 with cameras or projectors providing touching or overlapping fields of view
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 23/45 for generating image signals from two or more image sensors being of different type or operating in different modes, e.g. with a CMOS sensor for moving images in combination with a charge-coupled device [CCD] for still images
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 23/58 Means for changing the camera field of view without moving the camera body, e.g. nutating or panning of optics or image sensors
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 23/661 Transmitting camera control signals through networks, e.g. control via the Internet
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 23/698 for achieving an enlarged field of view, e.g. panoramic image capture

Abstract

An omnidirectional sensor array system, for example a panoptic camera, comprising a plurality of sensors arranged on a support of predetermined shape to acquire data, wherein said sensors are directional and wherein each sensor is attached to a processing node which comprises integrated electronics that carries out at least a portion of the signal processing algorithms locally in order to reduce the computational load of a central hardware unit.

Claims

1. An omnidirectional sensing device comprising a plurality of sensors arranged on a support of predetermined shape to acquire data, wherein said sensors are directional and wherein each sensor is attached to a processing node which comprises integrated electronics that carries out at least a portion of the signal processing algorithms locally in order to reduce the computational load of a central hardware unit.

2. The sensing device as defined in claim 1, wherein the sensors are cameras.

3. The sensing device as defined in claim 1, wherein the shape is hemispherical or spherical.

4. The sensing device as defined in claim 1, wherein it is scalable such that the number of real sensors and their characteristics in terms of the requested quality of acquisition may vary, e.g. resolution, sensitivity.

5. The sensing device as defined in claim 1, wherein the sensors and their processing node are placed in a network or interconnected network arrangement in order to guarantee a target quality of service in the data routing and throughput, and dynamic load balancing of tasks among neighboring processing nodes.

6. The sensing device as defined in claim 1, wherein sensors are optical (visible range), infrared, acoustic, ultrasound, and/or any particular combination of such directional sensor elements.

7. The sensing device as defined in claim 1, wherein sensors are cameras with different gain factors which allow to reconstruct high dynamic range images or videos.

8. The sensing device as defined in claim 1, wherein sensors are cameras with different frame rates and triggers and are used to reconstruct images or videos at frame rates higher than any individual imagers used.

9. The sensing device as defined in claim 1, wherein the sensors comprise several cameras, wherein some cameras register visible light and other cameras register IR light such that the device can reconstruct images in both frequency bands.

10. The sensing device as defined in claim 9 wherein any other light wavelength is used.

11. The sensing device as defined in claim 1, wherein it is used as a light field camera.

12. The sensing device as defined in claim 1, wherein a stereo pair of omnidirectional images are rendered by light field interpolation.

13. The sensing device as defined in claim 1, wherein the system computes an omnidirectional depth map.

14. A system comprising at least a sensing device as defined in claim 1, computer means and a rendering means for rendering the information sensed by the sensing device.

15. A system as defined claim 1, wherein the rendering means is a display and the information is image related information.