Mosaic-based panoramic depth imaging with a single standard camera

In this article we present a panoramic depth imaging system. The system is mosaic-based which means that we use a single rotating camera and assemble the captured images in a mosaic. Due to a, setoff of the camera's optical center from the rotational center of the system we are able to capture the motion parallax effect which enables the stereo reconstruction. The camera is rotating on a circular path with the step defined by an angle, equivalent to one column of the captured image. The equation for depth estimation can be easily extracted from system geometry. To find the corresponding points on a stereo pair of panoramic images the epipolar geometry needs to be determined. It can be shown that the epipolar geometry is very simple if we are doing the reconstruction based on a symmetric pair of stereo panoramic images. We get a symmetric pair of stereo panoramic images when we take symmetric columns on the left and on the right side from the captured image center column. Epipolar lines of the symmetrical pair of panoramic images are image rows. We focused mainly on the system analysis. Results of the stereo reconstruction procedure and quality evaluation of generated depth images are quite promising. The system performs well in the reconstruction of small indoor spaces. Our final goal is to develop a system for automatic navigation of a mobile robot in a room.