Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: TechMan on October 17, 2011, 04:25:15 PM
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http://www.slashgear.com/throwable-panoramic-ball-camera-has-us-seeing-spherical-potential-13187881/ (http://www.slashgear.com/throwable-panoramic-ball-camera-has-us-seeing-spherical-potential-13187881/)
Video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Th5zlUe6gOE&feature=player_embedded)
A ball that contains 36 mobile phone camera modules. You throw it up into the air and it will snap a picture once it reaches its apogee. You then use software to put the pictures together in a 360 degree panoramic shot.
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Looks like a young Luke Skywalker ought to be having his first lightsaber practice wearing a helmet with the blast shields down with it.
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perfect for seeing over the neighbors pesky fence.
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My next question is does one launch it with a potato cannon or a trebuchet? >:D
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My next question is does one launch it with a potato cannon or a trebuchet? >:D
Neither would probably work well since it looks as if the slight pause as the ball apexes before its descent triggers the cameras.
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Other than the slight deceleration from wind resistance, the ball isn't going to know if it's moving in a parabola or straight up and down. It's still going to have the same up-and-down kinematics if you shoot it out at an angle or straight up.
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This could be quite useful in a voyeristic-kinda way..... ;)
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My next question is does one launch it with a potato cannon or a trebuchet? >:D
I'm thinking a water balloon sling shot
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This could be quite useful in a voyeristic-kinda way..... ;)
Trying to see over the privacy fence that your neighbor put up?
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I can see two or three of them being thrown in the air simultaneously with a separation of a few feet or yards, and being able to create virtual 3-D walkthroughs.
Imagine these camera-balls, and their images run through something like Microsoft Lab's Photosynth, or the Google Streetview system with it's intelligent 3D photo-stitching technology.
http://www.ted.com/talks/blaise_aguera_y_arcas_demos_photosynth.html
The whole TED-talk demo, actually pretty "old" in net-years, circa 2007, but it's still impressive, and the real payoff in terms of what can be done to automatically "stitch" together photos into an immersive 3D navigable environment is if you skip ahead to 3:55. =)
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Other than the slight deceleration from wind resistance, the ball isn't going to know if it's moving in a parabola or straight up and down. It's still going to have the same up-and-down kinematics if you shoot it out at an angle or straight up.
My thoughts also. How does it know that it's at apogee?
They probably just set it so that it goes off X seconds after it senses entering freefall, and then calibrated X to be half the flight time of an average throw. If the ball was smart, they would make it recalibrate X based on previous throws.
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How does it know that it's at apogee?
Simple accelerometer function.
Brad
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Hmmm...in another ten years, I can see myself on the beach in Florida, wearing sandals and black socks of course, playing with this ball. The young ladies will say, "look at that poor old lonely man playing with a ball like he's a little kid. >:D
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Simple accelerometer function.
Not so simple if you want it to be able to handle the general case of a parabolic trajectory. Because the ball can rotate; I assume there is no requirement to toss it so that a particular side stays up. You could use a 3-axis accelerometer but if the ball is spinning, you are going to get some pretty crazy traces from all 3 axes. 3 axes of accelerometer plus a gyro would let you put it all together but it would be nontrivial.
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Barometric. There are some relatively inexpensive sensors available that can detect as little as one foot of altitude change.
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My next question is does one launch it with a potato cannon or a trebuchet? >:D
Looks like it would fit perfectly down the bore of one of the 'punkin chunkin' air cannons!
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Not so simple if you want it to be able to handle the general case of a parabolic trajectory. Because the ball can rotate; I assume there is no requirement to toss it so that a particular side stays up. You could use a 3-axis accelerometer but if the ball is spinning, you are going to get some pretty crazy traces from all 3 axes. 3 axes of accelerometer plus a gyro would let you put it all together but it would be nontrivial.
If you want to go that complex, have it shoot video with full position and orientation sensing, and the software could reconstruct a 3D still scene without the need for multiple balls. For that matter, tossing and/or rolling it around could generate full 3D walkthroughs.
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How long before we can roll it into a room and it will blow up if it sees someone I told it not to like? Yeah we got grenades, but I hate the hassle of sticking my head in to see if someone I don't like is inside. =D
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Simple accelerometer function.
Negative. A simple accelerometer would show 0g from the moment it leaves your hand until you catch it or it hits the ground.
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For that matter, tossing and/or rolling it around could generate full 3D walkthroughs.
I think that this is the technique Hollywood uses for action movies, only without the reconstruction software bit.
Negative. A simple accelerometer would show 0g from the moment it leaves your hand until you catch it or it hits the ground.
Sigh. Physics fail. The ball would see a constant 9.8m/s^2 acceleration downward during its entire trajectory, neglecting air resistance.
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Sigh. Physics fail. The ball would see a constant 9.8m/s^2 acceleration downward during its entire trajectory, neglecting air resistance.
No. That's what YOU would see, as an outsider observing the ball. The ball itself would feel nothing while in flight, and would feel a constant acceleration of 9.8m/s2 while you are holding it still in your hand.
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I think that this is the technique Hollywood uses for action movies, only without the reconstruction software bit.
Sigh. Physics fail. The ball would see a constant 9.8m/s^2 acceleration downward during its entire trajectory, neglecting air resistance.
Sigh, engineering fail. An simple accelerometer measures the force between a proof mass and a fixed (to the accelerometer) point. When "falling" (defined in this case as free movement in a gravity field, including upward on a ballistic trajectory), the force between the proof mass and case will be zero (no net acceleration between the two, including no net gravity force difference) and the accelerometer will read zero, again, neglecting aerodynamic drag.
HOWEVER, if one paired the accelerometer with some processing to create a 3-axis IMU, then biased it with a negative vector sum bias equal to 9.8m/s, it would then read what you describe, and the integral term of the combined vector (net velocity) would be zero when held, increase during the throw/launch, then progressively decrease to near zero (apogee), increase again in the fall, then decrease to near zero on the catch/landing.
So a simple one or three ads accelerometer is insufficient, one needs to add some processing (creating a 3-axis IMU, rather than a 3-axis accelerometer).
The above is not valid if the acceleration or velocity is measured relative to some external datum (I.e. relativistically or Doppler rf of other transmitters nearby) as that would give you a measurement of acceleration (the relativistic measurement) or velocity (Doppler) that doesn't depend on relative local forces.
Given the above, the device likely uses a 3-axis accelerometer and a simple micro controller to do the processing.
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gps trigger it and send it up on a ballon ride
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Cups and string.
Brad
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How about a light field camera.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDyRSYGcFVM&feature=player_embedded (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDyRSYGcFVM&feature=player_embedded)
Watch the above link for explanation.
https://www.lytro.com/ (https://www.lytro.com/)
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https://www.lytro.com/ (https://www.lytro.com/)
Meh. The only good thing about the Lytro toys is that they should force Raytrix prices down and specs up.
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How about a light field camera.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDyRSYGcFVM&feature=player_embedded (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDyRSYGcFVM&feature=player_embedded)
Watch the above link for explanation.
https://www.lytro.com/ (https://www.lytro.com/)
I think they are just taking multiple images while adjusting focus for every "image" that you take. Tapping the frame just causes a standard contrast-based focus search through the stack. Nice gimmick.
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I think they are just taking multiple images while adjusting focus for every "image" that you take. Tapping the frame just causes a standard contrast-based focus search through the stack. Nice gimmick.
Not quite, it's a plenoptic microlens array camera, similar to a shack-hartman wavefront sensor. The best analogy is it breaks the normal FOV into an array of smaller groups, each of which has its own microlens. What this allows, through processing, is the determination of the wavefront direction, rather than just the intensity. Since there will be multiple wavefronts, deconvolution processing then allows a user to choose the one that best represents the focus that is desired (at any given fixed focus position, different distances of object will result in different wavefront curvatures).