New eyes for robotics

This paper describes an imaging system that has been designed to facilitate robotic tasks of motion. The system consists of a number of cameras in a network arranged so that they sample different parts of the visual sphere. This geometric configuration has provable advantages compared to small field of view cameras for the estimation of the system's own motion and consequently the estimation of shape models from the individual cameras. The reason is that inherent ambiguities of confusion between translation and rotation disappear. Pairs of cameras may also be arranged in multiple stereo configurations which provide additional advantages for segmentation. Algorithms for the calibration of the system and the 3D motion estimation are provided.