[HN Gopher] Throwable tactical camera transmits 360deg panoramic...
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Throwable tactical camera transmits 360deg panoramic thermal images
Author : thunderbong
Score : 62 points
Date : 2024-09-13 12:27 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (newatlas.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (newatlas.com)
| leetrout wrote:
| I know we've made significant progress wit on-device compute but
| I would be surprised to find out they are stiching in real time
| in that amount of space... Even doing this in real time on a
| commodity laptop would be pretty impressive to me.
| Gys wrote:
| Thermal cameras normally have a much lower resolution and only
| a 4 or 8 bits color depth. More than enough for locating people
| in a situation, I assume
| markx2 wrote:
| "The man from Box 500 [UK MI5] proudly announced that the
| thermal-imaging camera at the rear had detected a pattern of
| movement. Every morning, he reported, at exactly 08:00, the
| hostages gathered in the commercial section on the ground
| floor. An SAS officer tartly pointed out the central heating
| was timed to go on every morning at that hour: the "hostages"
| detected by MI5's machine were radiators warming up."
|
| Excerpt From: The Siege by Ben Macintyre
|
| Very good read.
| brk wrote:
| It's plausible to do this on device. We were discussing this
| product concept 8 years ago at one of the video/AI companies I
| was at. Between the relatively low res of thermal cameras and
| the cues you can get from various sensors about orientation it
| should be doable.
| dylan604 wrote:
| When the camera settings do not change, the positions are
| locked, etc, you can quickly do a "stitch" with a template that
| doesn't really take a lot of compute at all. It's by no means a
| clean stitch. Even in the demo video, you can see the edges
| from each camera. However, this is a product embracing the
| "know your audience" mantra, and it serves the purpose as
| designed.
| finnh wrote:
| One step closer to the tunnel-mapping drones in Prometheus
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yO-eduvo904
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| That may be among the cooler things that tech like this is
| bringing us one step closer to.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Don't forget the stupid indoor drone security system that was
| brought out a few years ago. I can't believe anyone would use
| that
| woleium wrote:
| Lab126 (Amazon)
| ycombinete wrote:
| That's how I felt sending my little lidar robot vacuum out to
| map our apartment.
| ryanbuening wrote:
| Reminded me of the Sticky Camera from Splinter Cell:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQ-euCRgNO8
| calmworm wrote:
| This is cool but I was hoping to see one (or more) thrown, bounce
| around, then see the software piece together a 3D sort of layout
| of everything it captured. Excited to see v2!
| gonzo41 wrote:
| Whilst this seems cool. You won't be just throwing this. This
| will be a controlled item and you'll need to recover it, so
| eventually someone will lose one and then tears. Lots and lots of
| tears.
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| I didn't work directly for it, but I remember my team working on
| parts of the software and back-end stuff for Nokia Ozo[1], a
| 360deg virtual reality camera. I feel that that camera was ahead
| of its time.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_OZO
| dylan604 wrote:
| That's funny that the wiki article didn't put a picture of the
| camera itself and instead wasted an image on a generic logo.
| The duckbill look of it was definitely odd. The real-time
| preview was useful to directors that could not figure out,
| "what does the camera see" <facepalm> It SEES EVERYTHING!!!!
| Just stand there and look around. That's what VR cameras see.
| Why is that so hard?
|
| The Google camera that used 16 GoPros with more interesting to
| me even though it only did a cylinder rather than a complete
| sphere, but it did generate stereo images. We appended
| additional GoPros to the top/bottom of the unit so we could
| fill in the zenith/nadir of the final image. 22 total cameras.
| 22 mircoSD cards. DIT was a nightmare.
|
| We also played around with the prototype from FB that was
| closer to Ozo, but that was right at the end of my time with
| live action VR.
|
| None of these cameras were "throwable" though. There was a
| consumer unit though that would snap a 360deg image at the apex
| of the toss.
| jayd16 wrote:
| > "what does the camera see" <facepalm> It SEES
| EVERYTHING!!!!
|
| This is such a bad take, haha. Its as bad as telling the
| cinematographer to look forward. Obviously there's the exact
| point of view of the device but also the exposure, and other
| camera intrinsics you don't want to guess at when you're
| about to shoot a take.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Your take is also not a good one either as you are ignoring
| my personal experience, and it seems you're assuming I'm
| just making stuff up. The question isn't "is the exposure
| good", "did the actor hit their mark", or anything else
| that a direct might be concerned. It was "what does it
| see".
|
| Yes, it is hard to direct from around the corner and not
| being able to see anything. The Ozo did a live stitch that
| could be viewed in a headset. Guess what, directors didn't
| like wearing a headset all day just like the general
| public. Pushing the stitched feed to a monitor also caused
| confusion as some just can't wrap their head around how the
| rectilinear image translates. It came down to use attaching
| a dedicated GoPro to the stand of the VR camera that looked
| "straight" just so directors/video village could "see"
| something. The directors were now much happier than all of
| the other attempts.
| w-m wrote:
| I don't think many people would have thrown the OZO up to take
| cute panoramas though, as it went for something like $60,000..
| At the time (~2017), the OZO was the benchmark quality-wise,
| and it hit the community pretty hard, when Nokia cancelled the
| project over night and disbanded/fired the team behind it.
|
| At the time I was working for a startup called VideoStitch,
| later Orah, which had launched the Orah 4i, a much smaller,
| 4-lens, 360 degree 4K live streaming camera. Expectations were
| huge, that 360 degree video streaming would go through the
| roof, with a camera at every wedding. Didn't really work out
| that way, I wonder whether stereo 180 degree "Spatial Videos"
| in the Apple ecosystem will go the same way.
| jayd16 wrote:
| What made it ahead of its time? Seems like Google Daydream and
| that wave of 3DOF headsets came out in a year later and had
| their 15 minutes of stereo 360.
| w-m wrote:
| Throwable 360 cameras owe their heritage to Jonas Pfeil, who
| built one for his thesis at TU Berlin [0], and later
| commercialized the idea in a camera called Panono [1]. They never
| really went mainstream, but it was a really cool idea with lots
| of buzz back then (10+ years ago).
|
| [0] https://www.jonaspfeil.de/ballcamera/ [1]
| https://www.theverge.com/2013/11/12/5092670/panono-camera-ba...
| giantg2 wrote:
| Now install a motorized core so it can roll itself and be
| controlled by the operator.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Rainbow Six Siege used to have an "operator" that could throw
| sticky cameras that looked a lot like the ones in TFA, though
| smaller. Sometimes real life imitates video games.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| It's a logical development.
| Terretta wrote:
| Rainbow Six Siege (2016 update, Valkyrie):
|
| https://rainbowsix.fandom.com/wiki/Valkyrie#Device_Descripti...
|
| Splinter Cell (2002):
|
| https://splintercell.fandom.com/wiki/Sticky_Camera
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I was hoping to see a link to the purchase page.
|
| Surveillance/recon equipment and drones seem to be the next "2A"
| things to buy. And anti-drone tooling. Directed RF jammers?
| Drone-deployable castnets? Shotguns with turkey choke? Heh.
| rdl wrote:
| Their visible cameras are $7k, I'd be surprised if this is less
| than $15k.
|
| Assuming the Berlin patents have expired, a visible light or
| "night vision" near IR camera made from commodity sensors and
| on-device stitching is about $100-200 BOM which could be a $500
| premium cat toy (and thus actually affordable as a tactical
| tool for users other than funded US/EU police). I've been
| finding gear for community safety guys in South Africa and it
| is amazing how much can get done with cheap consumer gear now.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Benelli has a new m4 anti drone model for you.
|
| I personally think the m4 is way overrated. Compared to its two
| cousins the 1301 and 300 patrol it's just larger and heavier
| and more powerful expensive.
|
| But... I do think it's funny that basically in a year shotguns
| have been made relevant again.
|
| I've considered buying a couple of the $5 Alibaba drones to
| "test".
|
| If I could hook the cheapo alivaba drones up to my better DJI
| equipment, I think that might make for a fun 3gun course this
| year.
| jameshart wrote:
| Terminology-wise, what's the better way to communicate that
| something captures a truly omnidirectional spherical view, not
| just 360deg in a circle? Seems this article has gone for '360deg
| panoramic' but to me that implies blind spots above and below,
| but the camera placements on this device seem to have full
| spherical coverage. Shouldn't they call it a 41,253 square degree
| camera?
| NightlyDev wrote:
| You just said it: Omnidirectional, meaning in every direction
| :)
| z2h-a6n wrote:
| If you want to be specific, specify the solid angle [0]
| captured, in your prefered units, e.g 4p steradians = 41253
| square degrees = 1 spat.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_angle
| schobi wrote:
| I would love to see some footage off that in a throw - I would
| expect a blurry mess.
|
| With panono, they captured a single shot at the highest point in
| a throw. In daylight, short exposure time. Only when throwing
| straight up without strong rotation.
|
| With (uncooled) microbolometers you can't have a short exposure
| times and might end up with 20-30msec effective exposure. This
| thing might be harder to throw up straight without rotation.
| Throwing through a windows or rolling? Please show me that this
| does not give a blurry mess, but gives useful images! Demo
| footage suspiciously missing...
|
| Edit: I stand corrected - the spot video does not contain thermal
| but shows NIR images. One can see some point projections from a
| depth sensor?
| luma wrote:
| Perhaps the use case is to toss it into a potentially dangerous
| position, let it settle, and then take the shot? I don't see
| any claims that this is intended to operate while in motion.
| mrlatinos wrote:
| These aren't meant to provide imagery in motion. The point is
| to provide a view from the point where the ball lands...
| HenryBemis wrote:
| Midway-point between the authorities, or overshoot and see
| what's behind them. Depending on the scenery/layout placing
| 2-3 of these can make a big difference.
|
| Also why not drop them from a small (less-noisy) drone? Drone
| with a camera can help surveil the situation from above, it
| can drop one of these balls, so you increase visibility by a
| lot.
| ls612 wrote:
| These are intended to be used like grenades but for
| intelligence. If it fails or lands wrong it's not a big deal
| the idea is they will pump these things out by the millions.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| I doubt it's by the millions--unlike a grenade I think these
| will be recovered for reuse.
| lostlogin wrote:
| I don't see any mention of battery life.
|
| Edit: Their website is better than the article.
| https://bounceimaging.com/
|
| The 4G one seems to last 4-8 hours.
|
| https://bounceimaging.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Law_Enf...
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I like that the article refers to the company as "Bonce Imaging"
| (image caption), "Bounce Imaging", and "Bouncing Image".
|
| Bonce Imaging is definitely my favorite.
| svag wrote:
| The footage of the camera looks like an IR cut filter of a
| daylight camera rather than a thermal camera...
| CaptainFever wrote:
| Reminds me of the Threat Grenade from COD Advanced Warfare:
| https://callofduty.fandom.com/wiki/Threat_Grenade
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