RoboMirror: Simulating a mirror with a robotic camera

Simulated mirror display systems (SMDs) provide augmented rendering of mirror images. Many SMDs use multiple static cameras to create viewpoint-dependent rendering. Unfortunately, the quality of the rendering around the face of the viewer is typically poor due to visual distortion from warping and camera view misalignment. We propose the RoboMirror SMD to provide high-quality mirror rendering of the frontal face by using a robotic camera to track the viewer's head. An inclined one-way mirror allows the viewer's face to be captured by the robotic camera, and reflects the output from a projector to the viewer. Novel mirror calibration and depth-based image warping are proposed to produce an accurate mirror rendering of all objects based on the perspective of the viewer. To compensate for the blockage of light by the oneway mirror, a channel-equalization based contrast enhancement scheme is proposed that outperforms other image enhancement schemes for this system.