Tamron Co., Ltd., Saitama, Japan announces a concept model of a totally new security/surveillance camera unit which renders normal flat-field images, while enabling to capture an entire 180°field of view with no blind spot in any orientation all the way across.
The camera unit comprises of a fish-eye lens with 180°field of view angle, a 1.3MP CMOS image sensor, and a custom DSP which generates normalized flat-field images at any given region of the captured spherical image footprint, thus totally eliminating mechanics for pan and tilt operations.
"Conventional speed-dome cameras unavoidably require use of pan and tilt drive mechanism", says Mr. Morio Ono, president and CEO of Tamron Co., Ltd., "to direct optics towards objects of interest. Sometimes, such lag time could result in missing to capture a critical image at a critical moment. Because of the totally electronic pan and tilt operation, response time under such circumstances is nothing but a click of a button, or a key", continued Mr. Ono.
The advantage of mechanics-free construction of such pan and tilt system does not end here, but it brings longevity in life and stability in performance over the course of years with enhanced reliability as a system without sustaining wear and tear.
"You can expect to expand the horizon of installation scenes", further commenting Mr. Ono, "because of the camera does not generate any acoustic noise, which at times works against the objective of security/surveillance system, typically in a covert operation". Indeed, the acoustic noise coming out of a camera unit could, depending on the installation, could defeat the whole purpose, and the wholly software-based camera control may bring a perfect solution to the application of that kind.
The camera system not only produces rectilinear images but provides extra features integrated in the DSP: such as motion detection of an object within an given image field, trailing the object once detected, and/or zooming up (by electronic zoom) to 4X by user control without losing image quality to any significant degree.
All of those features are conceivably packaged in a small chassis with a dimension of approximately 55mm(H) x 55mm(V) x 30mm(D), while it could further be down-sized when maturing to a commercial version model, tweaking the current prototype sample.
Main Specifications
Lens Spec. f= 1mm
F/2.8 DC IRIS
Field of View 180° Horizontal
Lens Type Fish eye (180°FOV)
Imager 1/3.8" CMOS
Effective Pixel Number 1.3MP
Scanning System Progressive
Pan Electronical PAN
Tilt Electronical TILT
AGC 30dB
Other functions Distortion correction
(User setup by PC enabled) 9 preset positions and sequential transistion
Motion detection
Source: http://www.tamron.co.jp/