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Paired cameras for stereoscopic enhancement

morgaine

Has anyone reported yet their use of two Pi cameras slaved together as a binocular pair and the output being  processed in one of the many ways available for stereoscopy or 3D  imaging?

 

In addition to the above, I was pondering ways to combine such a pair of still images or video streams with those forthcoming CastAR 3D glasses that we were talking about a little while ago, hopefully produced one day by Jeri Ellsworth's Technical Illusions outfit --- HackADay has a brief description of the technology (see Youtube and The Amp Hour for a lot more).

 

Since  the retro-reflective screen happily sends back anything projected at it from each eye's vantage point, it should require no processing at all to view the output from dual cameras in full glorious 3D in CastAR, other than maybe format conversion.  Given the low price of the Pi camera, this is sure to happen the instant the glasses become available.

 

(I  was also wondering how the eye/brain combination would perceive the effect of dramatically increasing the separation between the two cameras when used with CastAR --- that's sure to be interesting, as it will allow parallax to be increased artificially beyond human range.)

 

And going even further, processing the dual images or streams for contrast enhancement or to pick out other desireable visual properties is sure to be of interest in many areas, microscopy being just one.

 

Morgaine.

Parents

  • I'm surprised it's not been prominent if someone has done it (even if it entails using two RPIs, or multiplexing in hardware), because it seems such a good use for these cams. I planned to try two lower-res cams for machine vision (so no need for HD in this case) on the BBB, but I had some issues with the amount of memory currently allocated for the PRUs.

    But seeing it done in HD would be superb.

  • in reply to shabaz

    Indeed, the new opportunities for machine vision are quite huge, possibly unlimited --- price affects everything.

     

    Even good ol' human vision may get a boost when low pricing allows it.  For example, I was initially pondering applications in microscopy because of our earlier discussion about it, and that's why I started thinking about using a pair of cameras so that I wouldn't to lose the stereoscopic benefits of my current binocular microscope.  CastAR + dual cameras would preserve the current benefits and probably improve on them.

     

    But by decoupling the camera site from the projection site, this automatically gives us remote 3D viewing, and that means remote surgery will benefit for starters.  Seeing exactly what you're doing with remote manipulators can be pretty important in that application, as in many others.

     

    And if you can do surgery remotely, then soldering or reworking SMD boards remotely must be a walk in the park. image

     

    At the other end of the size scale, how about hooking together views from cameras on opposite sides of the Earth?  Blink imaging is already hugely powerful for detecting things that change in the night sky, but long-baseline parallax with the help of CastAR would add even more capability for near-Earth object detection.  And at the low price of the Pi camera, everyone with a telescope could be providing image feeds for use by CastAR-equiped viewers.  Some may even cool their cameras for low noise with Peltiers or dry ice or even liquid nitrogen if the sensor survives --- at this price, one can afford to experiment.  I expect a lot of such applications to appear.

     

    And to bring this full circle back to your point, now imagine this parallax-aided visual data being used by machines.  This could be big, and not only for citizen science.  Pi-niche pricing changes everything.

Reply
  • in reply to shabaz

    Indeed, the new opportunities for machine vision are quite huge, possibly unlimited --- price affects everything.

     

    Even good ol' human vision may get a boost when low pricing allows it.  For example, I was initially pondering applications in microscopy because of our earlier discussion about it, and that's why I started thinking about using a pair of cameras so that I wouldn't to lose the stereoscopic benefits of my current binocular microscope.  CastAR + dual cameras would preserve the current benefits and probably improve on them.

     

    But by decoupling the camera site from the projection site, this automatically gives us remote 3D viewing, and that means remote surgery will benefit for starters.  Seeing exactly what you're doing with remote manipulators can be pretty important in that application, as in many others.

     

    And if you can do surgery remotely, then soldering or reworking SMD boards remotely must be a walk in the park. image

     

    At the other end of the size scale, how about hooking together views from cameras on opposite sides of the Earth?  Blink imaging is already hugely powerful for detecting things that change in the night sky, but long-baseline parallax with the help of CastAR would add even more capability for near-Earth object detection.  And at the low price of the Pi camera, everyone with a telescope could be providing image feeds for use by CastAR-equiped viewers.  Some may even cool their cameras for low noise with Peltiers or dry ice or even liquid nitrogen if the sensor survives --- at this price, one can afford to experiment.  I expect a lot of such applications to appear.

     

    And to bring this full circle back to your point, now imagine this parallax-aided visual data being used by machines.  This could be big, and not only for citizen science.  Pi-niche pricing changes everything.

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