STEREO VIEWING

• US 20170163970A1
• Filed: 02/13/2017
• Published: 06/08/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 04/07/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Nokia Technologies Oy (Nokia Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Nokia Technologies Oy (Nokia Corporation)
• Inventors: Gronholm, Kim, Baldwin, Andrew Robert
• Granted Patent: US 11,575,876 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• CPC Class Codes: G02B 2027/0134 of stereoscopic type
• CPC Class Codes: G02B 2027/0187 slaved to motion of at least a part of the body of the user, e.g. head, eye
• CPC Class Codes: G02B 27/0093 with means for monitoring data relating to the user, e.g. head-tracking, eye-tracking
• 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 35/18 by simultaneous viewing
• CPC Class Codes: G03B 37/04 with cameras or projectors providing touching or overlapping fields of view
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/011 Arrangements for interaction with the human body, e.g. for user immersion in virtual reality blind teaching G09B21/00
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/012 Head tracking input arrangements
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/04815 Interaction with a metaphor-based environment or interaction object displayed as three-dimensional, e.g. changing the user viewpoint with respect to the environment or object
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/16 Sound input; Sound output speech processing G10L
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 13/156 Mixing image signals
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 13/161 Encoding, multiplexing or demultiplexing different image signal components for multi-view video sequence encoding H04N19/597
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 13/189 Recording image signals; Reproducing recorded image signals
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 13/243 using three or more 2D image sensors
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 13/257 Colour aspects
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 13/279 the virtual viewpoint locations being selected by the viewers or determined by tracking
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 13/282 for generating image signals corresponding to three or more geometrical viewpoints, e.g. multi-view systems
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 13/296 Synchronisation thereof; Control thereof
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 13/324 Colour aspects
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 13/344 : with head-mounted left-right displays
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 13/366 : using viewer tracking
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 13/378 : for tracking rotational head movements around an axis perpendicular to the screen
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 13/383 : for tracking with gaze detection, i.e. detecting the lines of sight of the viewer's eyes
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/124 : Quantisation
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/162 : User input
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/167 : Position within a video image, e.g. region of interest [ROI]
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/17 : the unit being an image region, e.g. an object
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 19/597 : specially adapted for multi-view video sequence encoding
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 2213/008 : Aspects relating to glasses for viewing stereoscopic images

Abstract

The invention relates to creating and viewing stereo images, for example stereo video images, also called 3D video. At least three camera sources with overlapping fields of view are used to capture a scene so that an area of the scene is covered by at least three cameras. At the viewer, a camera pair is chosen from the multiple cameras to create a stereo camera pair that best matches the location of the eyes of the user if they were located at the place of the camera sources. That is, a camera pair is chosen so that the disparity created by the camera sources resembles the disparity that the user'"'"'s eyes would have at that location. If the user tilts his head, or the view orientation is otherwise altered, a new pair can be formed, for example by switching the other camera. The viewer device then forms the images of the video frames for the left and right eyes by picking the best sources for each area of each image for realistic stereo disparity.

Claims

1. A camera device for creating stereo viewing image data, comprising:

at least three cameras in a regular or irregular setting located in such a manner with respect to each other that any pair of cameras of said at least three cameras has a disparity for creating a stereo image having a disparity;

said at least three cameras having overlapping fields of view such that an overlap region for which every part is captured by said at least three cameras is defined.

2. The camera device according to claim 1, wherein said any pair of cameras of said at least three cameras has a parallax corresponding to parallax of human eyes for creating a stereo image.

3. The camera device of claim 2, wherein said parallax between said any pair of cameras is between 5.0 cm and 12.0 cm.

4. The camera device according to claim 1, wherein said at least three cameras have different directions of optical axis.

5. The camera device according to claims 1, wherein said overlap region has a simply connected topology.

6. The camera device according to claim 1, wherein the field of view of each of said at least three cameras approximately corresponds to a half sphere.

7. The camera device according to claim 1 , wherein

said camera device comprises three cameras, said three cameras being arranged in a triangular setting, whereby the directions of optical axes between any pair of cameras form an angle of less than 90 degrees.

8. The camera device according to claim 1, wherein the at least three cameras comprise:

eight wide-field cameras positioned essentially at the corners of a virtual cube and each having a direction of optical axis essentially from the center point of the virtual cube to the corner in a regular manner, wherein the field of view of each of said wide-field cameras is at least 180 degrees, so that each part of the whole sphere view is covered by at least four cameras.