We present an approach to view-based mobile robot localization using a X-slits image based rendering (IBR) method for creating novel views from a set of input images. The input images are acquired by a non-central catadioptric sensor mounted on a robot moving on a straight line. We propose to use the IBR for column ordering only, where occlusions in the horizontal direction are modeled and the sensor can be non-central. For the column matching between a query view at an unknown position and virtual views created by IBR, we use correlation of columns.

We propose a method for visual robot localization using a panoramic image volume as the representation from which we can generate views from virtual viewpoints and match them to the current view. We use a geometric image-based rendering formalism in combination with a subspace representation of images, which allows us to synthesize views at arbitrary virtual viewpoints from a compact low-dimensional representation.

Non-central (X-slits) images can be used in image based rendering (IBR) for new view synthesis for a viewer moving in a restricted region. Novel, i.e. previously unseen, views are rendered from virtual camera positions from a set of images captured at some predefined camera positions. The novel views correspond to camera positions not contained in the input image set. For instance, the input sequence consists of images captured on a circular path, but the viewer can move in a disk defined by that path. We investigate a class of non-central images, the omnidirectional X-slits images, which capture environment around the viewer completely. The virtual viewer can rotate his head freely in each position without the need of creating another image for different viewing direction. New images have to be generated only in case of a change in position of the viewer. This approach allows efficient representation of high resolution (and thus space demanding) images for IBR in memory. 1

We are studying the geometry of a 360/spl times/360 mosaic image formation. A 360/spl times/360 mosaic camera model and a calibration procedure are proposed. It is shown that only one point correspondence is needed in order to acquire epipolar rectified images. The 360/spl times/360 mosaic camera model is therefore determined by only one intrinsic parameter It is shown that the relation between coordinates estimated with different values of intrinsic 360/spl times/360 mosaic camera parameters is a scaling of all scene point coordinates with additional nonlinear changes in the z coordinates of the scene points. Experimental results verifying the reconstruction of real scene points are presented.