Abstract
A family of reflective surfaces is presented that, when imaged by a camera, can capture a global view of the visual environment. By using these surfaces in conjunction with conventional imaging devices, it is possible to produce fields of view in excess of 180° that are not affected by the distortions and aberrations found in refractive wide-angle imaging devices. By solving a differential equation expressing the camera viewing angle as a function of the angle of incidence on a reflective surface, a family of appropriate surfaces has been derived. The surfaces preserve a linear relationship between the angle of incidence of light onto the surface and the angle of reflection onto the imaging device, as does a normal mirror. However, the gradient of this linear relationship can be varied as desired to produce a larger or smaller field of view. The resulting family of surfaces has a number of applications in surveillance and machine vision.
© 1997 Optical Society of America
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J. S. Chahl and M. V. Srinivasan, "Reflective surfaces for panoramic imaging: errata," Appl. Opt. 38, 1196-1196 (1999)https://opg.optica.org/ao/abstract.cfm?uri=ao-38-7-1196
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