Digital camera

About: Digital camera is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 12169 publications have been published within this topic receiving 137431 citations. The topic is also known as: digicam & digital still camera.

Calculating an object size using images

Abstract: An electronic device that determines a geometric scale of an object using two or more images of the object is described. During operation, the electronic device calculates the size of the object along a direction using multiple images of the object that were taken from different perspectives (such as different locations and/or orientations in an environment) along with associated imaging-device characteristics. For example, the size of the object may be calculated using the images, the associated focal lengths of a digital camera that acquired the images, and the law of cosines. Using the scale of the object, an image of the object may be appropriately scaled so that it can be combined with another image.

Event recording apparatus

Abstract: The invention provides a system for recording and displaying a time sequential scene on a computer (16). The digital camera (12) transmits a sequence of digital image frames to the timer (14) representative of the image of a body passing a plane in space. Each frame represents a line object (18) of the body, thus forming a fractional part of the scene. Once the frame reaches the image timer (14), it is digitally marked with a time reference (34) and buffered into a block of information. The main control computer (16) stores blocks of information from the image timer (14) for a variety of processing and features available to the user. The invention also provides a selected memory (36), preferably a virtual memory subsystem, or hard-disc drive. Preferred constructions for adjusting camera pixel processing of light values, time-marking the images, creating color palettes for interactive viewing of color images, and video data coding to accommodate the high volume of line image data are described.

Method of controlling operation of a digital camera to take an identification photograph

Abstract: Provided is a method of controlling the operation of a digital camera to order to take an identification photograph in a natural setting by displaying a frame and a reference outline of the identification photograph, performing photographing according to a photographing signal by a user, displaying a detection area to detect an outline of a figure around the reference outline on a photographed image, detecting the outline of the figure in the detection area, and forming a background image for the identification photograph in a set background area with respect to the detected outline.

Calibration of a Wide-Angel Digital Camera System for Near Real Time Scenarios

Abstract: Near real time monitoring of natural disasters, mass events, and large traffic disasters with airborne SAR and optical sensors will be the focus of several projects in research and development at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in the next years. For these projects, new airborne camera systems are applied and tested. An important part of the sensor suite plays the recently developed optical wide angle 3K camera system (3K = “3Kopf”), which consists of three non-metric off-the-shelf cameras (Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II, 16 MPixel). The cameras are aligned in an array with one camera looking in nadir direction and two in oblique sideward direction, which leads to an increased FOV of max 110°/ 31° in across track/flight direction. With this camera configuration, a high resolution, colour and wide-area monitoring task even at low flight altitudes, e.g. below the clouds, becomes feasible. The camera system is coupled to a GPS/IMU navigation system, which enables the direct georeferencing of the 3K optical images. The ability to acquire image sequences with up to 3Hz broadens the spectrum of possible applications in particular for traffic monitoring. In this paper, we present the concept of calibration and georeferencing which is adjusted to the requirements of a near real time monitoring task. The concept is based on straight forward georeferencing, using the GPS/IMU data to automatically estimate the not-measured boresight angles. To achieve this without measuring of ground control points (GCPs), we estimate on-the-fly boresight angles based on automatically matched 3-ray tie points in combination with GPS/IMU measurements. A prerequisite for obtaining robust results for the boresight angles is that the air plane attitude changes slightly during image taking; through these singular solutions can be avoided. Additionally, we assume known and fixed parameters of interior orientation. The determination of the interior orientation is performed ground based using a bundle adjustment of images from a calibration test field. The determination of the parameters of the interior orientation is repeated to check for their systematic changes in time. The proposed georeferencing and calibration concept was tested with images acquired during three flight campaigns in 2006. To evaluate the accuracy obtained by direct georeferencing using the proposed estimation procedure for the boresight angles without GCPs, the data are compared with the results of a bundle adjustment using GCPs and the GPS/IMU information. Summarizing, the RMSE of direct georeferencing with/without GCPs is 1.0m / 5.1m in position and 0.5m / 1.0m in height, at image scales of 1:20.000. The accuracy without GCPs is regarded as acceptable for near real time applications. Additionally, it is shown that the parameter of the interior orientation remain stable during three repetitive calibrations on a test field for all three cameras.

Depth From a Polarisation + RGB Stereo Pair

Abstract: In this paper, we propose a hybrid depth imaging system in which a polarisation camera is augmented by a second image from a standard digital camera. For this modest increase in equipment complexity over conventional shape-from-polarisation, we obtain a number of benefits that enable us to overcome longstanding problems with the polarisation shape cue. The stereo cue provides a depth map which, although coarse, is metrically accurate. This is used as a guide surface for disambiguation of the polarisation surface normal estimates using a higher order graphical model. In turn, these are used to estimate diffuse albedo. By extending a previous shape-from-polarisation method to the perspective case, we show how to compute dense, detailed maps of absolute depth, while retaining a linear formulation. We show that our hybrid method is able to recover dense 3D geometry that is superior to state-of-the-art shape-from-polarisation or two view stereo alone.