Industrial Technology Research Institute

Other

Kingbyte Information Corp.

Tse Cheng

Shu-Cheng Huang

Cheng-Chin Chiang

Ju-Wei Chen

Chun-Wei Hsieh

Jun-Wei Hsieh

The invention relates to building spherical panoramas for image-based virtual reality systems. The image-based spherical panoramas can be navigated in any desired view direction (360-degrees) by suitable three-dimensional image browsers or viewers. The method and system also includes computing the number of photographs required to be taken and the azimuth angle of the center point of each photograph for building a spherical environment map representative of the spherical panorama. The method and system also includes an algorithm for computing the accurate azimuth angles of these taken photographs and seaming them together to build the spherical environment map.

Image-based method and system for building spherical panoramas

A card reader separable from a host machine is provided. The card reader includes a main body having a first card-placing slot for placing therein a first memory card, a connection port mounted on the main body for separably connecting with a plug, and a carrying rack mounted inside the host machine for mounting thereon the plug and separable carrying the main body so that the card reader can be separated from the host machine. The mobile card reader provided here is able to be used in both ways of being built-in the host machine and being connected from the outside.

Card reader separable from host machine

A method is described for producing smooth transitions between a source vista and a destination vista with unknown camera axes in panoramic image based virtual environments. The epipoles on the source vista and the destination vista are determined to align the vistas. Corresponding control lines are selected in the vistas to compute the image flow between the vistas and to densely match the pixels. In-between image frames are computed by forward-resampling the source vista and backward-resampling the destination vista.

Producing transitions between vistas

A method and apparatus for displaying a selected portion of a panoramic image onto a view plane is provided. The method provides an environment map in the form of a plurality of pixel values representative of the panoramic image. A first portion of the pixel values representative of a selected first area of the panoramic image is mapped to a projection buffer. A second portion of the first portion of pixel values, representative of a desired area of the panoramic image to be viewed is mapped to the view plane. The view plane is displayed on the display.

Real-time player for panoramic imaged-based virtual worlds

A pair of images are stitched together by warping the pair of images into an environment map representative of a panoramic image. A first edge and a corresponding second edge for each of the first and second images, respectively, are detected. A set of edge position coordinates along the edge of the first warped image is determined. A set of possible matched solutions from the edge position coordinates of the first and second edge are generated. An optimum matched offset from the set of possible matched solutions is determined. Because the set of possible matched solutions is small and compact, the optimum matched offset can be determined efficiently from the set of solutions.

Growing community of inventors

Hsinchu, Taiwan

Tse Cheng