Abstract: Omnidirectional imaging sensors have been used in more and more applications when a very large field of view is required. In this paper, we investigate the unwrapping, epipolar geometry and stereo rectification issues for omnidirectional vision when the particular mirror model and the camera parameters are unknown in priori. First, the omnidirectional camera is calibrated under the Taylor model, and the parameters related to this model are obtained. In order to make the classical computer vision algorithms of conventional perspective cameras applicable, the ring omnidirectional image is unwrapped into two kinds of panoramas: cylinder and cuboid. Then the epipolar geometry of arbitrary camera configuration is analyzed and the essential matrix is deduced with its properties being indicated for ring images. After that, a simple stereo rectification method based on the essential matrix and the conformal mapping is proposed. Simulations and real data experimental results illustrate that our methods are effective for the omnidirectional camera under the constraint of a single view point.

Key words: Single point of view, Calibration, Catadioptric image unwrapping, Omnidirectional stereo vision, Epipolar geometry, Essential matrix, Conformal mapping

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