SPHERICAL PANORAMIC IMAGING SYSTEM

摘要

A spherical panoramic image camera system including four receptacles equally angularly spaced about a geometric center and four cameras, each camera comprises a lens having a lens field of view of more than about 180 degrees and an optical axis, each camera is configured to be mountable to one of the four receptacles with the field of view pointed away from the geometric center and an image recorder having a substantially rectangular shape having a vertical dimension and a horizontal dimension, wherein the vertical dimension is adapted to receive an image cast by the lens that corresponds to the lens field of view and the horizontal dimension is adapted to receive an image cast by the lens that corresponds to a field of view of more than about 90 degrees. The optical axes of the four cameras are equally angularly spaced about the geometric center.

主权项

1. A spherical panoramic image camera system comprising:
(a) a frame having a geometric center; (b) four lenses, each lens having a lens field of view of more than about 180 degrees and an optical axis, wherein each lens is configured to be disposed with the field of view pointed away from said geometric center and said four lenses are equally angularly spaced about said geometric center on a plane; (c) four image recorders, each image recorder having a substantially rectangular shape comprising a vertical dimension and a horizontal dimension, wherein said vertical dimension is adapted to receive an image cast by one of said lenses that corresponds to a lens field of view and the horizontal dimension is adapted to receive an image cast by said one of said lenses that corresponds to a field of view of more than about 90 degrees, and wherein said four image recorders are substantially parallelly disposed; and (d) a controller adapted to cause image capture on said four image recorders simultaneously to produce four images.