Full-View Spherical Image Camera

This paper proposes a method of realizing a full-view spherical image camera, called spherical camera, and gives its calibration method. The spherical camera can acquire a full-view spherical image by one capture of a single camera. The spherical field of view is divided into two hemispherical ones. Each hemispherical field of view is imaged by a fisheye lens, respectively. The hemispherical views are fused by a mirror so as to acquire them on a single image plane. As for the calibration of this spherical camera, we let the spherical camera observe the inside of a calibration box so that the control points for calibration can cover the whole view of each fisheye lens, and calibrate it based upon a spherical camera model. We developed the prototype of the spherical image camera and an application of monitoring the whole surrounding environment of vehicle by the spherical camera is also given