Applications of 360 Degree Cameras: Multi-body Omnidirectional Tracking System
Project Page: http://www.cs.columbia.edu/CAVE/proje...
This project involves the application of our work on catadioptric cameras with wide fields of view. We have developed compact 360 degree cameras that have been mounted on a variety of robots and used to control or even drive the robots from remote locations. We have also developed intelligent surveillance systems that use 360 degree video to simultaneously track multiple objects moving within the large field of view. A perspective video stream is computed from the omnidirectional video stream that seeks to keep the moving objects within its field of view. In another project, we have combined a 360 degree camera (master) with a conventional pan/tilt/zoom (PTZ) camera (slave) and used the 360 degree camera to determine where the PTZ camera should look next. We have also developed an imaging system called the Zoomnicam which is an omnidirectional camera with a very wide range of optical zoom settings. In this system, the curved mirror is mounted on a controllable translational stage and the optics includes a controllable zoom lens. This enables the system to go from super-wide angle imaging to high-zoom imaging by simply translating the mirror and changing the optical zoom of the lens.
This video shows an intelligent tracking system that automatically tracks multiple objects within the omnidirectional field of view. The system generates a perspective view for each moving object and remains focused on the object as it moves around.