Omnidirectional sensing for human interaction

Conventional TV cameras are limited in their field of view. A real-time omnidirectional camera which can acquire an omnidirectional (360 degrees) field of view at video rate could be applied in a variety of fields such as autonomous navigation, telepresence, virtual reality and remote monitoring. We have developed several different types of omnidirectional image sensors and multiple image sensing system which consists of an omnidirectional image sensor and binocular vision. In this paper, we introduce the outlines of our developed sensors and show examples of application to human-robot interaction.