Abstract: Cameras are having a large impact on our society, every cell-phone is
equipped with a camera and in the very near future all cars will
feature cameras to improve traffic safety and even clothing will be
equipped with integrated cameras. While cameras are continuing to
pervade our daily lives, optics developers are working on increasing
the field of view of the cameras. If the field of view of a camera
exceeds 180 degrees, it is called an omnidirectional camera.
Up until three years ago, these cameras were too heavy, expensive,
and bulky to be integrated in commercial products. However today,
omnidirectional cameras have become sufficiently small to be installed
in cars and even carried on small lightweight helicopters. The market
of these cameras is increasing and accordingly the demand for software
that enables their use in the real world is rising.
In this talk, I will present how to combine omnidirectional vision
and robotics into two applications: ground robots and micro aerial
vehicles. After a brief overview on omnidirectional vision, I will show
results on vehicle motion estimation for ground vehicles and autonomous
flight of micro helicopters by just using a single miniature
omnidirectional camera as a sole input.
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