Camera shake eliminated in motion

Tom Shelley reports on an innovation likely to be of equal benefit in security systems and telerobotics and which could ultimately make home videos watchable A new and much improved system has been developed to eliminate camera shake. Derived from a military development programme, it not only works on fixed scenes, but also when panned and even on scenes shot from a moving vehicle. The idea is called StableEyes, and Eureka recently had the opportunity to learn about it from the lips of Dave Barrett, one of the business development managers at QinetiQ's Malvern Technology Centre. According to Barrett, it compares each part of an image frame with the next one in order to determine the global motion. It is thus much more sophisticated than systems used on Japanese camcorders that rely on motion sensors. Barrett told Eureka that it came out of studies to improve surveillance of defence related sites using high zoom cameras on top of poles. In order to compare whole successive images and apply a correction in real time imposes a heavy computing load. He said the original system was built, "In hardware a few years ago" but the present system runs in software on a Philips TriMedia chip, normally found in set top boxes. Unlike previous attempts to achieve similar goals, it is clever enough that if panned, it will track the whole scene with it, and if used in a moving vehicle, it can work out the motion of scenes coming towards the camera. It is commercially available as a small, packaged box unit, developed in conjunction with Ovation Systems based at Milton Common in Oxfordshire. As such, it was overall winner of the Ifsec Security Industry Awards organised by the British Security Association and CMP Information. Only one box is needed for multiple cameras feeding a single screen. The box is 160 x 90 x 24mm, weighs 440g, and is said to sell for around £2,000. It stabilises PAL or NTSC video images and works with live or recorded video. Ovation sees markets in town centre CCTV, cross-border monitoring, long-range surveillance, mobile recording and video post-processing. In the general industrial environment, the technology has obvious uses anywhere where vibrations are an issue. Vision systems could employ the technology to monitor machine vibrations and then react to this by sending messages to a controller. The technology also has potential application in vision-guided telerobotics, such as the German made OFRO roving sentinel shown in our illustration, sold in the UK by Quadratec, based in Monmouthshire. QinetiQ has long had programs aimed at developing remote controlled miniature and not so miniature battle tanks, one may suspect that it may well find its way into systems attached to these. Fighting a battle by remote control, if one has to have wars, certainly beats the suffering of World War II tank crews being incinerated in their vehicles. It is also an interesting option to be fitted to systems receiving images from cameras on inspection and maintenance equipment sent inside dangerous environments such as nuclear reactors or process chemical plant. And if it eventually finds its way into camcorders, it should significantly reduce the suffering of those forced to watch the film making efforts of home video enthusiasts. Ovation Systems email Ovation Systems Quadratec Pointers * System eliminates camera shake in video systems. It works with live or pre-recorded feeds * It works in fixed mode, pan mode, and even when mounted in a moving vehicle * It is commercially available in packaged form