Auxiliary Camera Array for Computational Photography Depth Reconstruction
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional camera systems for still and moving photography rely on a single high-quality image sensor and optical lenses, limiting their ability to perform advanced computational photography functions beyond what a single sensor can achieve.
Innovation Solution
The integration of an array of buddy cameras with a main camera system, where images from the buddy cameras are rectified, undistorted, and used to compute disparity solutions, allowing for the reconstruction of frame buffers with depth information and additional image effects, enhancing the capabilities of the main camera system.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If a single high-quality image sensor is used, then image quality is maintained, but computational photography capabilities are limited
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines a main image sensor with multiple auxiliary image sensors (buddy cameras) into a unified camera system. The auxiliary sensors capture additional perspective information that is computationally processed to enhance the main image, enabling computational photography functions like depth mapping, focus stacking, and perspective transformation while maintaining the core imaging function of the main sensor.
Solution Approach 2:
The auxiliary image sensors serve multiple functions: they provide depth information through stereo disparity, enable computational focus adjustments, support perspective transformations, and assist in scene understanding. This multi-functionality allows a single camera system to perform various computational photography tasks that would otherwise require separate specialized devices.
2Adaptability or versatility
If auxiliary image sensors are added, then computational photography functions are enabled, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The camera system is segmented into distinct functional components: a main image sensor for primary capture and multiple auxiliary image sensors for supplemental data collection. Each sensor type is optimized for its specific role, with the auxiliary sensors positioned to capture particular perspectives needed for computational processing. This segmentation allows the system to manage complexity by dividing functions across specialized components rather than requiring a single complex sensor.
Data Source
AI summary
Methods, devices, systems and computer software/program code products include techniques for creating a deep frame buffer, such techniques being implementable in conjunction with an apparatus comprising a main camera and an array of buddy cameras, the main camera and the buddy cameras being operable to capture images; and techniques for creating at least one depth buffer, such techniques being implementable in conjunction with an apparatus comprising at least two cameras.