Algorithms for Maintaining a High-Resolution Panoramic Display with a Tele-Operated Robotic Camera

A new class of low-cost teleoperated pan-tilt-zoom robotic video cameras can provide high resolution panoramic displays of remote sites for disaster response, environmental monitoring, and security applications. While the camera is teleoperated, the resulting video is transmitted back and inserted into an evolving panoramic display. Since small errors in camera position can produce large registration errors in the panoramic display, we address the image alignment problem. To quantify alignment error, we introduce a new metric based on motor error and image overlap. We use this metric to develop a fast minimal variance image alignment algorithm. We have implemented the algorithm and describe experiments demonstrating panoramic quality and that optimal alignment can be computed as fast as the camera can be tele-operated.