Engineering Solutions

Yesterday, my boss mentioned an additional service he'd like to add to the arsenal. At the time, I had ton of work on my plate. Being the 'graphics guys', he told me to look into it. I dropped everything. Procrastination is one hell of a drug, my friends.

The Real Work-Around

The real work-around was the fact that our robot is equipped with 6 custom cameras, installed in a perfectly hexagonal arrangement around it's circumference. With perfectly 120º field's of view (HFOV), we had to reverse-engineer the fisheye and lens distortion coefficients via good 'ole fashion trial & error.

Proof of Concept

I'll be the first to admit it's still just a proof of a concept. A proof of concept, that's it. The implication, however, is what I'm stoked about. Given 6 image renderings (640x480px, at that!), I was asked what I could do with 'em. I was looking for an excuse to procrastinate, so ba-da-bing-ba-da-boom, I was in.

AI // Man’s Best Friend..? Nope, Just Me.

Building the image stitch itself seemed remarkably similar to calibrating & training Artificial Intelligence. Turns out, that’s exactly what it was. I’ll be the first to admit, it wasn’t easy. Manually placing each point on each image (in up to 50 contrasting data points) was tedious, to put it lightly. Like come on guys, can’t we hang a picture or two on the walls? At least paint the damn walls! (see: Exhibit A below)

Trial & Error. The Numbers will Add Up Eventually, Right?

The only fixed specification we could go off was the focal length on the sensor. From there we could calculate the sensor diagonal and, consequently the HFOV, which eventually led us to an approximation of the fisheye distortion coefficient. All 3 lens distortion coefficients? Eh, we’re gettin’ there.

Bringin' it All Back Together

My boss thought I was joking when I wanted to get this baby up & runnin’ that night. Here we are, getting lucky with 2 programs that could get the job done without costing a dime. Seriously though, let’s get those cameras updated, homie. In the meantime, here ya’ll go (I live in Texas now, just tryna blend in).

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