A Walkthrough Image Generation for Facility Guidance by Interpolating Omnidirectional Images

Recently, a number of Web sites offer guidance through facilities using omnidirectional images with omnidirectional cameras that can take 360-degree images. As a result, Internet users can survey the surroundings from an arbitrary viewing direction by mouse operations. However, an image space constructed with only one omnidirectional image has two problems. One problem is a limitation in the elevation of the viewing area that can be seen. The other problem is that we cannot change our aspect from that of the image. The present paper describes a method of integrating a lower and an upper hemisphere omnidirectional image as one space in order to improve the elevation limitation and the construction of a virtual walkthrough image space by interpolating between two adjoining image spaces to enable the aspect to be changed.