Complementary-structure catadioptric omnidirectional sensor design for resolution enhancement

Considering the problem of low and nonuniform resolution in omnidirectional imaging, a complementary catadioptric imaging method is proposed by using multiple mirrors. Due to the reflection of mirrors, each spatial object has two imaging positions, in the inner and outer of sampled omnidirectional images, respectively, which are generated from two different optical paths. For instance, a prototype of omnidirectional sensor based on complementary double imaging is designed, which contains two convex mirrors (cone and hyperboloid) in conjunction with a plane mirror. The design constraints and optical geometric model of imaging are analyzed in detail. By mathematical analysis, two improvements of resolution have been achieved: (1) more uniform distribution of resolution and (2) complementary resolution distribution in the radial and tangential directions between the inner and outer. To prove and demonstrate the remarkable complementarity, a simple fusion experiment based on wavelet decomposition and reconstruction is performed on a pair of cylindrical panoramic images unwrapped from an omnidirectional image. (C) 2011 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). [DOI: 10.1117/1.3549260]