Looking at the image, at first I thought this was about those mirrors designed with computer modelling to reflect an image without reversing left to right, so for example, you could hold a book up to it and read it normally.
Normal mirrors reflect light at an angle from the surface normal of the mirror equal to the incident angle. This *can* be 90 degrees, but it's a relatively rare occurrence.
@mikeness: My narcissism could not get any bigger. Local weather stations often erroneously report a high pressure system forming when it's really just my enormous ego passing through town.
I'm no mathematician, but I'll bet that these are more like lenses than mirrors. I'm guessing there is a focal point beyond which you see text (or the image) un-mirrored, but at other points you may see the test out of focus.
It's actually performing the flip between you and the mirror. So if you're in the wrong spot it will just look blurry.
If you can produce such an image using a mirror, then there's no reason you couldn't recreate it agorithmically as well.
So why would a stair climbing robot need such a mirror? It would just create a part which could go out of alignment, and it's not like doing a transformation like this on an image is particularly cpu intensive. In fact, I was doing stuff like this years ago on a 486 in realtime.
oh man shoulda kept reading the whole comment. putting emphasis on 'real time' makes me look like a jackass now.
anyways, if the robotics maker could go without one more moving part, i'm sure they would. i won't pretend to know why they're going the mirror route, but i don't doubt that there are several sufficient reasons.
I find it impossible to believe a 360 image is free of distortion... the mirror has to distort the nature of the image by adjust the scale of objects to provide such a reflection.
it's like the prosecutors trying to talk about bittorrent and failing... talking optics without understanding is a little off.
@freelunch: As with prosecutors, commentors should understand a subject before showing ignorance:
Optical distortion: An optical aberration caused because the transverse magnification may be a function of the off-axis image distance. May be positive (pincushion distortion), or negative (barrel distortion).
There is no pincushion or barrel distortion in the mirror's reflection - all lines are straight as stated in the article.
@Hap: Actually...they're not. I didn't notice this right away, but if you look at all the lines that radiate outwards from the center, yes, they are all as straight as a rail. However, if you look at the vertical line just to the right of the man's right elbow, it does bow outwards a bit.
Really, there is no way to make a wide-angle lens or mirror that won't distort straight lines in some manner. All you have to do is point that thing at a sheet of graph paper and you'll have proof positive.
07/20/09
07/18/09
It's a minor point, but...
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02/25/09
It's actually performing the flip between you and the mirror. So if you're in the wrong spot it will just look blurry.
02/25/09
all true, except the lens vs mirrors thing. a concave mirror exhibits some of the basic effects of these mirrors, and yet is not lense-like.
02/25/09
So why would a stair climbing robot need such a mirror? It would just create a part which could go out of alignment, and it's not like doing a transformation like this on an image is particularly cpu intensive. In fact, I was doing stuff like this years ago on a 486 in realtime.
02/25/09
"If you can produce such an image using a mirror, then there's no reason you couldn't recreate it agorithmically as well."
there are plenty of good reasons why you can't recreate it algorithmically in real time
02/25/09
oh man shoulda kept reading the whole comment. putting emphasis on 'real time' makes me look like a jackass now.
anyways, if the robotics maker could go without one more moving part, i'm sure they would. i won't pretend to know why they're going the mirror route, but i don't doubt that there are several sufficient reasons.
02/25/09
02/25/09
02/25/09
02/25/09
02/25/09
it's like the prosecutors trying to talk about bittorrent and failing... talking optics without understanding is a little off.
02/25/09
Optical distortion: An optical aberration caused because the transverse magnification may be a function of the off-axis image distance. May be positive (pincushion distortion), or negative (barrel distortion).
There is no pincushion or barrel distortion in the mirror's reflection - all lines are straight as stated in the article.
02/26/09
Actually...they're not. I didn't notice this right away, but if you look at all the lines that radiate outwards from the center, yes, they are all as straight as a rail. However, if you look at the vertical line just to the right of the man's right elbow, it does bow outwards a bit.
Really, there is no way to make a wide-angle lens or mirror that won't distort straight lines in some manner. All you have to do is point that thing at a sheet of graph paper and you'll have proof positive.