[其它] Throwable Panoramic Ball Camera

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发表于 2011-12-19 16:38:24 |只看该作者 |倒序浏览

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SIGGRAPH Asia 2011, Hong Kong, China, December 12 – 15, 2011.
ISBN 978-1-4503-0807-6/11/0012
Throwable Panoramic Ball Camera
Jonas Pfeil
TU Berlin
Kristian Hildebrand
TU Berlin
Carsten Gremzow
TU Berlin
Bernd Bickel
TU Berlin
Marc Alexa
TU Berlin
Figure 1: Left: The Throwable Panoramic Ball Camera. Right: Viewer screenshot. Scenes can have many moving objects (see banana).

1 Overview
Acquiring panoramic images using stitching takes a lot of time and
moving objects may cause ghosting. It is also difficult to obtain a
full spherical panorama, because the downward picture cannot be
captured while the camera is mounted on the tripod.
In this work, we present a throwable panoramic camera that solves
these problems. The camera is thrown into the air and captures
an image at the highest point of flight - when it is hardly moving.
The camera takes full spherical panoramas, requires no preparation
and images are taken instantaneously. It can capture scenes with
many moving objects without producing ghosting artifacts and creates
unique images.
Our camera uses 36 fixed-focus 2 megapixel mobile phone camera
modules. The camera modules are mounted in a robust, 3D-printed,
ball-shaped enclosure that is padded with foam and handles just like
a ball. Our camera contains an accelerometer which we use to measure
launch acceleration. Integration lets us predict rise time to the
highest point, where we trigger the exposure. After catching the
ball camera, pictures are downloaded using USB and automatically
shown in our spherical panoramic viewer. This lets users interactively
explore a full representation of the captured environment.
We used the camera to capture full spherical panoramas at scenic
spots, in a crowded city square and in the middle of a group of
people taking turns in throwing the camera. Above all we found
that it is a very enjoyable, playful way to take pictures.
2 Previous Work
In recent years a phenomenon called ”camera tossing” emerged -
throwing consumer cameras into the air using the self-timer. Kuwa
et al. [2010] proposed a throwable camera system that stitches images
of a single high speed camera to create a kind of ribbon image.
”triops” by Faoro is a design concept that proposes a throwable
panoramic camera. The concept is designed to only capture a cylindrical
panorama and a method of triggering has not been described.
Other design concepts include ”flee” by Bogazpinar and ”SatuGO”
by Larsen and Jacobsen which propose non-panoramic throwable
cameras with a single camera module. These concepts describe

camera tossing. They are meant to capture multiple images at a
fixed interval or a single image with a manual timer, respectively.
Our camera system captures a full spherical panorama and automatically
determines the correct time for triggering. We integrate the
measured acceleration during launch to obtain the launch velocity.
From this the rise time to the top can be easily calculated. The results
are sharp images as the camera triggers at the highest point of
the flight - when it is moving very slowly.
Hand-held and stationary full spherical panoramic cameras exist
(e.g. Tanahashi et al. [2000], Immersive Media Corp. Dodeca
2360 System. [2006]), but at least the mount or the arm will always
be visible in the picture. In addition to producing a full spherical
image and taking no time to setup, our throwable panoramic camera
creates unique images.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Axel Kretzschmann for helpful tips on high
speed electronics, Analog Devices, Inc., for providing parts and
STMicroelectronics for helpful information regarding the camera
module.
References
IMMERSIVE MEDIA, 2006. Dodeca 2360 System. www.
immersivemedia.com/products/capture.shtml.
KUWA, T., WATANABE, Y., KOMURO, T., AND ISHIKAWA, M.
2010. Wide Range Image Sensing Using a Thrown-up Camera.
In ICME 2010, 878–883.
TANAHASHI, H., YAMAMOTO, K., WANG, C., AND NIWA, Y.
2000. Development of a Stereo Omnidirectional Imaging System
(SOS). In IECON 2000, 289–294.