Hardware Implementation of an Omnidirectional Camera with Real-Time 3D Imaging Capability

A novel hardware implementation of an omnidirectional image sensor is presented which is capable of acquiring and processing 3D image sequences in real time. The system consists of a hemispherical arrangement of a large number of CMOS imagers, connecting to a layered arrangement of a high-end FPGA platform that is responsible data framing and image processing. The hardware platform in charge of real-time processing the 3.8 Gb/s data which is generated by the cameras is presented, and a first application of the system consisting of omnidirectional image acquisition is demonstrated.