• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.10-14
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• 2011

In this paper, we present an efficient hardware architecture of unrolling image mapper of catadioptric omnidirectional imaging systems. The catadioptric omnidirectional imaging systems generate images of 360 degrees of view and need to be transformed into panorama images in rectangular coordinate. In most application, it has to perform the panorama unrolling in real-time and at low-cost, especially for high-resolution images. The proposed hardware architecture adopts a software/hardware cooperative structure and employs several optimization schemes using look-up-table(LUT) of coordinate conversion. To avoid the on-line division operation caused by the coordinate transformation algorithm, the proposed architecture has the LUT which has pre-computed division factors. And then, the amount of memory used by the LUT is reduced to 1/4 by using symmetrical characteristic compared with the conventional architecture. Experimental results show that the proposed hardware architecture achieves an effective real-time performance and lower implementation cost, and it can be applied to other kinds of catadioptric omnidirectional imaging systems.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.479-486
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• 2012

In this paper, a ranging system is proposed that is able to measure 360 degree omnidirectional distances to environment objects. The ranging system is based on the structured light imaging system with catadioptric omnidirectional mirror. In order to make the ranging system robust against environmental illumination, efficient structured light image processing algorithms are developed; sequential integration of difference images with modulated structured light and radial search based on Bresenham line drawing algorithm. A dedicated FPGA image processor is developed to speed up the overall image processing. Also the distance equation is derived in the omnidirectional imaging system with a hyperbolic mirror. It is expected that the omnidirectional ranging system is useful for mapping and localization of mobile robot. Experiments are carried out to verify the performance of the proposed ranging system.

• Korean Journal of Optics and Photonics
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.88-97
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• 2015

An omnidirectional optical system can be described as a special optical system that images in real time a panoramic image with an azimuthal angle of $360^{\circ}$ and the altitude angle corresponding to the upper and lower fields of view from the horizon line. In this paper, for easy fabrication and compact size, we designed and fabricated a catadioptric omnidirectional optical system consisting of the mirror part of a spherical mirror with a central hole (that is, obscuration), a plane mirror, the imaging lens part of 3 single spherical lenses, and a spherical doublet in the visible light spectrum. We evaluated its image performance by measuring the cut-off spatial frequency using automobile license plates, and the vertical field of view using an ISO 12233 chart. We achieved a catadioptric omnidirectional optical system with vertical field of view from $+53^{\circ}$ to $-17^{\circ}$ and an azimuthal angle of $360^{\circ}$. This optical system cleaniy imaged letters on a car's front license plate at the object distance of 3 meters, which corresponds to a cut-off spatial frequency of 135 lp/mm.