Unique technology of creation of circular panoramic image in real time

Continuous capturing of circular panoramic image can be very advantageous for many applications. Image from panoramic cameras provides the best overview of the camera vicinity. This is especially useful for monitoring and security systems in open landscape as well as in large halls, shops and stores, parking lots etc. Panoramic cameras also offers the best possible overview of mountain ski centers, beaches and other areas.

Most common way to create panoramic image is employing of standard camera rotating around vertical axis. Image is then created during camera rotation. But this method works only for static images with long periods of image refresh. Sometimes are panoramic images created by special line-scanning devices with rotating mirrors. Such cameras are rather complex, image refresh time is pretty low and sensitivity is very low. DataCam offers solution in the form of camera head with four cameras offering filed of view 360° × 160° or single hemispherical camera with 360° × 90° field of view. High quality digital DataCam^® cameras with high dynamics and low noise are used in both cases. The front optical plane of the used lenses works as neutral density filters changing the transparency according to light conditions. This results into capability to capture scenes with bright lights as well as dark shadows. Perfect image stitching is accomplished thanks to precision camera head calibration by the software running in the computer GPU.

The DataCam^® digital CCD cameras offer number of features:

• panoramic image up to 360 × 160°

• no moving parts

• high sensitive CCD detectors

• color and monochrome versions

• various resolutions and CCD sizes

• 16 bit digitization

• very low image noise

• several connections available:

  • USB 2.0

  • Ethernet

  • wireless data link

• transfer of RAW data without compression artifacts and information loss

• safe 8 to 40 V DC power

• only 6W consumption

• compact and robust aluminum case

• weather resistant

Easy to use in the Control Web ^® rapid application development system:

• highly parallel real-time image processing in the GPU

• capability to process geometry of several hundreds of images per second on single PC

• image transfer over a network

• storing and archiving of image

• easy image processing integration into applications

Perfect overview in single image

It is possible to display complete panorama or any sub-frame in the desired resolution. Capability to enlarge the image of course depends on the resolution of used cameras.

Software

Massively parallel image processing in the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) enables real-time image processing, previously available only in off-line RAW converters. The software also allows many other ways of image processing—denoising, sharpening, color saturation, motion detection, edge detection, etc. Integration with the Control Web rapid application development system opens the whole world of process control, supervision and monitoring application as well as interoperability through standard protocol like HTTP or OPC, access to SQL databases, communication with numerous industrial devices and I/O units etc.

The panoramic camera leaflet in the PDF form can be downloaded from this web site.

04. 2008, leaflet Panoramic digital cameras, 2 pages, screen resolution (570 kB) prosp_2008_02_screen.pdf, print resolution (8 MB), prosp_2008_02.pdf.

Leaflet covering perimetric monitoring system “Pavla”, which also uses the above described panoramic camera technology, is also available in the PDF format.

09. 2007, leaflet Pavla, 4 pages, screen resolution (870 kB) prosp_2008_01_screen.pdf, print resolution (26 MB), prosp_2008_01.pdf.

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