Apparatus and method for capturing a scene using staggered triggering of dense camera arrays

摘要

This invention relates to an apparatus and a method for video capture of a three-dimensional region of interest in a scene using an array of video cameras. The video cameras of the array are positioned for viewing the three-dimensional region of interest in the scene from their respective viewpoints. A triggering mechanism is provided for staggering the capture of a set of frames by the video cameras of the array. The apparatus has a processing unit for combining and operating on the set of frames captured by the array of cameras to generate a new visual output, such as high-speed video or spatio-temporal structure and motion models, that has a synthetic viewpoint of the three-dimensional region of interest. The processing involves spatio-temporal interpolation for determining the synthetic viewpoint space-time trajectory. In some embodiments, the apparatus computes a multibaseline spatio-temporal optical flow.