Active stereo vision system with foveated wide angle lenses

A novel active stereo vision system with a pair of foveated wide angle lenses is presented. The projection curve of the lens is designed so that it facilitates active vision algorithms for motion analysis, object identification, and precise fixation. A pair of such lenses are mounted on a specially designed active stereo vision platform. It is compact and light so that it can be mounted on a mobile robot or a manipulator. A real time stereo tracking system is constructed using the platform, a dual-processor servo controller, and pipelined image processors with a multi-processor backend.