Omnidirectional stereo vision with a hyperbolic double lobed mirror

This paper presents a compact panoramic stereo vision system based on a double lobed mirror with hyperbolic profile. As hyperbolic mirrors ensure a single viewpoint the incident light rays are easily found from the points of the image. The geometry of the double lobed mirror naturally ensures matched epipolar lines in the two images of the scene. These two properties make the double lobed mirror especially suitable for panoramic stereo vision because range estimation becomes simple and fast. This is a great advantage for real-time applications. The proposed mirror is useful for mobile robot navigation, surveillance, and machine vision where fast and real-time calculations are needed.