Squeezing Video out of a Lytro Light Field Camera

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Abstract. Light field photography represents a new way of sensing the environment that provides higher dimensional information than standard cameras. While standard cameras record the intensity of all light rays that intersect their sensor, light field cameras also record the direction of these light rays, and the intensity associated with different directions. Many new applications of light field video are expected to be developed in the future, as this technology matures. This thesis aims to find new ways of using the cheapest light field camera, the Lytro Light Field Camera (called the ‘Lytro’ in this document), to develop and test applications of light field video. A software package called ‘Lytro Remote Shutter’ has been developed, which builds on currently available software to provide a tool for capturing dynamic light field data sets. These data sets have associated pose information that is obtained by synchronising the Lytro with a Universal Robot 5 robot arm. This software is also capable of capturing a ‘manually-triggered’ video stream of ∼0.54fps by remotely triggering the camera in a timed loop. A 200 image data set has been captured using this software. This thesis also presents a conceptual design of an Extraction System that has the potential to extract video from the Lytro. This System includes an ‘Interceptor Printed Circuit Board’ that can physically intercept light field data en route from the image sensor to the processor within the Lytro, and a USB-FPGA board containing a Field-Programmable Gate Array, to be used to process the data and transfer it to an external device. This thesis also presents a preliminary list of requirements that this system will need to meet if it is to successfully extract video from the Lytro.

Reference: G. Kennedy, “Squeezing Video out of a Lytro Light Field Camera”, Undegraduate thesis, 2018.