A Wide Angle Vision Sensor with Fovea

Abstract

In this paper a new concept of a vision sensor with fovea is presented and the possibility of the application for on-line machine control is demonstrated. The proposed vision sensor is designed approximate to the visual mechanism of the human eye, which has a fovea (high resolution attention zone) in its field of view and executes the necessary movements of viewpoint. A distortion lens plays an important role in the system, which enlarges the image in the attention zone and compresses the one in the peripheral zone. The lens has been designed in order to realize the system. The specification and characteristics are presented in detail. The results show that the proposed system will work well to recognize the environments of mobile robots.