JPH05153485A - Rotation picture input device - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To obtain the rotation picture input device in which a picture and plural pictures resulting from rotating the picture are especially obtained simultaneously. CONSTITUTION:The rotation picture input device in which a picture and plural pictures resulting from rotating the picture are especially obtained simultaneously is provided with a lens system 1, a light distributer 2 receiving a light from the lens system 1 and distributing the light to plural lights, plural image pickup elements 3-1, 3-2... receiving the light outputted from the light distributer 2 and applying photoelectric conversion to the light, a synchronizing signal generating section 4 generating a synchronizing signal and TV camera modules 5-1, 5-2... converting a signal converted by the image pickup element synchronously with the synchronizing signal outputted from the synchronizing signal generating section 4 into a TV signal. The image pickup elements 3-1, 3-2... are set to a desired angle with respect to the input light.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a rotating image input device, and more particularly to a rotating image input device capable of simultaneously obtaining an image and a plurality of images obtained by arbitrarily rotating the image.

For example, in an image processing apparatus used for the vision of a robot, it is necessary to handle a moving image, and therefore, high speed processing is required. Further, in order to recognize the environment, that is, in order to find the continuity of the image, it is necessary to extract edges at various angles with respect to a certain image, that is, a shade change portion of the image signal. For that purpose, high-speed processing becomes possible if image signals of various angles can be simultaneously input for a certain image.

[0003]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, in order to obtain image signals at various angles with respect to an image, a certain image is input and the image is rotated by a processing device. For this reason, the image is rotated using software by a microprocessor, or the image is rotated using dedicated hardware as shown in FIG. 4 (A) (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 62-1776).
No. 75).

[0004]

However, in the above description, since the image is rotated using software, the processing speed is low, so that it cannot be applied to the one requiring high-speed processing such as a moving image. In the case of a rectangular image such as a TV image as shown in FIG.
For example, when the image is rotated by 90 degrees as shown in FIG. 3, there are portions where the image protrudes, such as the solid line diagonal portions a and a, and there are portions where there is no image such as the dotted diagonal line portions b and b.

Further, in the above, as shown in FIG. 4C, the output signal of the TV camera 40 is received by the image processing device 41, and the rotated image is obtained by the rotating hardware section 42 capable of processing at the video rate. ..

Therefore, since the processing can be performed at a high speed like the video rate, a moving image can be handled, but since it is necessary to store the image once in a memory or the like in order to rotate the image, at least the video rate is applied to the input image. There is a delay of (1/30 second). Also, the hardware for rotating the image is of considerable scale.

Then, as shown in FIG.
In a rectangular image such as a V image, if you rotate it,
This also means that there is a protruding portion of the image or there is a portion without the image.

Further, since the image is a quadrangle, it is necessary to perform interpolation in order to accurately perform rotations other than an integral multiple of 90 degrees, and the hardware for performing this interpolation becomes a considerable scale. .. If interpolation is not performed, the image quality will deteriorate.

That is, in the prior art, a. When a rectangular image such as a TV image is rotated, the image may protrude or a part without an image may exist. B. There is a delay of at least 1/30 second for the input image, c. It is necessary to perform interpolation (a large amount), and if this is not done, there is a problem such as deterioration of image quality.

Therefore, it is an object of the present invention to provide a rotating image input device that solves these problems.

[0011]

In order to achieve the above object, according to the present invention, as shown in FIG. 1, light input from a lens system 1 is split and output by a light splitter 2 into the same plurality of lights. Each distributed output light is input to the image pickup device 3-1, 3-2, ... 3-n such as CCD. At this time, the image pickup elements 3-2 ... 3-n are arranged so as to rotate with respect to the image pickup element 3-1 by a predetermined angle. For example, the image pickup device 3-2 is rotated 90 degrees clockwise with respect to the image pickup device 3-1, and the image pickup device 3 -n is rotated 70 degrees.

These image pickup devices 3-1, 3-2 ... 3
-The output signals of n are TV camera module 5-
1, 5-2 ... 5-n are input to the synchronization signal generator 4
It is output as a TV signal in accordance with the synchronization signal generated by.

[0013]

As a result, n images obtained by rotating a certain image by a certain angle are simultaneously displayed on the TV camera module 5
Image processing device 6 outputs from -1, 5-2 ... 5-n
Since it is possible to perform parallel processing with n, it is possible to simultaneously process n images for edge extraction and the like.

[0014]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS An embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to FIGS. FIG. 2 is a block diagram of an embodiment of the present invention, and FIG. 3 is a block diagram of the optical distributor. In the figure, the same symbols as the other figures indicate the same parts, and 6-1, 6-2, ... Are the edge extraction parts, 7-1,
Reference numeral 7-2 indicates an actuator, and 8 indicates a rotation control section.

The lens system 1 is for inputting light of an object to be image-processed. The light distributor 2 is the lens system 1
The light input from is distributed to each of the image pickup devices 3-1, 3-2, ....

As shown in FIG. 3, the optical distributor 2 is composed of a combination of a total reflection mirror and a half mirror. For example, in the case of four outputs, the half mirror 2-1.
0,2-1-1,12-12 and total reflection mirror 2-1,2-
It has 2, 2-3, etc. The light input from the lens system 1 is first bisected by the half mirror 2-10 and input to the total reflection mirror 2-1 and the half mirror 2-12.

The light input to the total reflection mirror 2-1 is input to the half mirror 2-11, a part of the light is output as it is, and the other is input to the total reflection mirror 2-1 and reflected to be the output light. A part of the light input to the half mirror 2-12 becomes the output light as it is, and the other light is input to the total reflection mirror 2-3 and reflected to become the output light. In this way, four output lights can be obtained by the light distributor 2.

Image sensor 3-1, 3-2, 3-3, 3-4
Is composed of, for example, a CCD. When the image sensor 3-1 is set to 0 degree as an angle with respect to incident light, the image sensor 3
-2 is 90 degrees, image sensor 3-3 is 45 degrees, image sensor 3-
Set these so that 4 is -45 degrees.

TV camera module 5-1, 5-2, 5
-3 and 5-4 are image pickup elements 3-1, 3-2 and 3-
The signal photoelectrically converted by 3, 3-4 is transmitted, and NT
Converted to SC signal and output. At this time, the NTSC signal is output in synchronization with the synchronization signal generated by the synchronization signal generation circuit 4. Each TV camera module 5-1, 5-2, 5-3, 5-4 is an ordinary TV camera module from which the image pickup device section (CCD) and the synchronizing signal generating circuit are removed.

The image processing device 6 includes an edge extraction section 6-1.
6-2, 6-3, 6-4 are provided, and T
The NTSC signals output from the V camera modules 5-1, 5-2, 5-3, 5-4 are input, and thereby edge extraction processing is performed respectively. The edge extraction processing is composed of, for example, an A / D conversion circuit, a 3X3 spatial filter circuit of pipeline architecture, a density conversion circuit of pipeline architecture, etc., and an edge can be extracted with a delay of a maximum of several ms.

Actuators 7-1, 7-2, 7-3, 7
-4 is for individually controlling the rotation of the image pickup devices 3-1, 3-2, 3-3, 3-4. Further, the rotation control section 8 transmits a control signal for individually controlling the rotation control angles of these actuators 7-1, 7-2, 7-3, 7-4.

Regarding the operation of FIG. 2, for example, a certain image,
This is rotated by 90 °, 45 °, and −45 °, and four images of each image are output, and these are output.
A case where parallel processing is performed will be described.

The light from a certain object input from one lens system 1 is divided into four lights by the light distributor 2 and sent to the image pickup devices 3-1, 3-2, 3-3 and 3-4, respectively. To be done. At this time, each image sensor 3-1, 3-2, 3-3, 3-
Numeral 4 designates the image pickup element 3-1 by the actuators 7-1, 7-2, 7-3, 7-4 with the image pickup element 3-1 set to 0 degree as described above.
-2 is 90 degrees, image sensor 3-3 is 45 degrees, image sensor 3-
These are rotated and arranged so that 4 is -45 degrees.

These image pickup devices 3-1, 3-2, 3-3
The signals photoelectrically converted by 3-4 are input to the TV camera modules 5-1, 5-2, 5-3, 5-4, converted into NTSC signals and output. At this time, the NTSC signal is output in synchronization with the synchronization signal generated by the synchronization signal generation circuit 4.

Therefore, the TV camera modules 5-1 and 5
The synchronization of the NTSC signals output from -2, 5-3 and 5-4 is all equal. NTS output from these TV camera modules 5-1, 5-2, 5-3, 5-4
The C signal is the edge extraction unit 6 of the image processing device 6--
1, 6-2, 6-3, and 6-4 are input, and edge extraction processing is performed.

[0026]

According to the present invention, it is possible to process an input image without delay, and it is not necessary to perform interpolation for rotations other than integral multiples of 90 degrees.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a diagram illustrating the principle of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a configuration diagram of an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is an explanatory diagram of an optical distributor according to the present invention.

FIG. 4 is an explanatory diagram of a conventional example.

[Explanation of symbols]

 DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 Lens system 2 Optical distributor 3-1, 3-2 ... Image sensor 4 Synchronous signal generation circuit 5-1, 5-2 ... TV camera module 6 Image processing device 7-1, 7-2 ...・ Actuator 8 Rotation controller

Claims (3)

[Claims] 1. A rotary image input device capable of simultaneously obtaining an image and a plurality of images obtained by arbitrarily rotating the image, wherein a lens system 1 and light from the lens system 1 are input and An optical distributor 2 that distributes the light to a plurality of lights, a plurality of image pickup devices 3-1 and 3-2 that receives the light output from the light distributor 2 and photoelectrically converts the light, and generates a synchronization signal. Synchronous signal generator 4, and a TV for converting the signal converted by the image sensor into a TV signal in synchronization with the synchronous signal output from the synchronous signal generator 4.
A rotary image input device comprising camera modules 5-1 and 5-2, wherein the image pickup device is set at a desired angle with respect to input light. 2. The image pickup device according to claim 1, wherein an actuator is provided to change a rotation angle of the image pickup device, and the image pickup device can be changed to a desired angle by controlling the actuator. Rotating image input device. 3. The rotary image input device according to claim 1, further comprising an edge extraction circuit that extracts edges based on an output of the TV camera module.