Stereo Imager

Real-Time Wide Field of View Stereographic Image Capture, Storage, Broadcast and Playback

PI: Dr. Raymond Sedwick

The overarching challenge of tele-presence is to provide an environment to the human operator that is sufficiently familiar that the interface itself does not become burdensome and distract from the goals of the mission.  The ultimate achievement would be to embed the operator into a scene in such a way as to convince him or her that they are actually on site.  We are currently developing a system that would not only provide panoramic real-time viewing, but also allow the scene to be viewed stereographically, effectively embedding the observer (or observers) within the scene.  The key to the technology is the image capture shown in Figure 1.  The cameras are arranged so that uninterrupted viewing of both left- and right-eye perspectives on a scene can be captured in real-time.  This video data is then compressed, possibly recorded and transmitted wirelessly to a head mounted display, where the left and right eye information is separated back out and sent to the proper eye.  The full architecture is shown in Figure 2. 

Since full panoramic data is transmitted, the user is not tied to a specific viewing direction, and multiple users can receive the transmission and look in different directions at the same time.  The technology is being developed for NASA for the purpose of planetary exploration, but many commercial applications have been identified.  The technology is being developed under a Phase II STTR (Small Business Technology Transfer) with Axis Engineering Technologies, Inc. located in Cambridge.

The Space Systems Laboratory and Axis Engineering Technologies have also proposed a follow-on technology which would provide a projection system for viewing the data panoramically, providing better embedding of the user within the scene.  This technology has been proposed to the DOD through the Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) program.