Vision Extension for a Ball Camera by Using Image Completion

A ball camera is a high tech ball equipped with cameras to obtain images from the ball's point of view. To capture 360° images with a minimum number of cameras, we embedded two ultra-wide-angle cameras in the ball. However, the two cameras were set diametrically opposite to each other; therefore, a blind spot was present, which could not be captured by the two cameras. Consequently, the obtained 360° image had a discontinuous part. In this paper, we describe the design and implementation of the ball camera and propose a method for completing the blind spot using image completion. We applied our method to the videos captured by the ball camera and proved this method successfully completes the blind spot and provides more real-life images.