Visadapt: Catadioptric adaptive camera for scenes of variable density of visual information

This paper presents the design method of a multi-resolution camera, named Visadapt. It is made of a conventional compact camera with a sensor and a lens pointed to a new deformable mirror so that the mirror in a flat state is parallel to the image plane. The main novelty of the latter mirror, to our knowledge, is the ability to control automatically strokes of several millimeters. This allows Visadapt to capture scenes with a spatially variable density of visual information. A grid of linear actuators, set underneath the mirror surface, deforms the mirror to reach the desired shape computed to capture several areas of different resolutions. Mechanical simulations are allowed to iterate on Visadapt's design, to reduce the geometrical distortions in the images. Evaluations made on an actual prototype of Visadapt show that, by adapting the mirror shape, this camera can magnify a scene object up to 20%, even off-centered in the field-of-view, while still perceiving the rest of the scene.