Monitoring Around a Vehicle by a Spherical Image Sensor

This paper describes a prototype of a full-view spherical image sensor, gives a method for sensor calibration, and discusses display modalities of the captured full-view image for monitoring around a vehicle. To monitor the whole surrounding situation of a dynamic environment by a single camera, a spherical field of view (FOV) is divided into two hemispherical views. Each hemispherical FOV is imaged by a fisheye lens. Both of the hemispherical views are fused by a mirror to acquire them on a single image plane. To calibrate the full-view spherical image sensor, a three-dimensional (3-D) calibration pattern is used to compute the internal parameters of each fisheye lens and their relative orientation based upon a spherical camera model. Finally, several display modalities are discussed to show drivers the relevant spherical image information on planar displays for monitoring around a vehicle