Improvement of image resolution and range finding accuracy in a compact compound-eye imaging system with a single imager

Abstract

A compound-eye imaging system which consists of a lens array and a single imager has a thinner and more compact hardware than those with multiple imagers or mainlens in front of the lens array. However, the issues of the system are reconstruction of high-resolution images and accurate range finding to overcome its short baseline. In this paper, we show an irregular lens-array arrangement to alleviate sampling points degeneration for far object and a method for accurate range finding incorporated with super-resolution processing. The experimental results show that the power spectrum at 0.25/pixel is improved by 6.7 dB and the average error at a distance of 3.2m is 0.2m. The error is lower than that of a conventional stereo camera with a same baseline of our system.