Researchers at the University of Alabama, Huntsville have developed a 271-lens camera array that offers vast improvements on aerial imagery resolution and area coverage. In test flights at 15,000 feet, the camera was able to see a 21-kilometer diameter area at a resolution of .3 meters.
Lead researcher David Pollock discovered that if you point a large number of lenses at a common point, and then make small corrections on each lens, you achieve improvements that far surpass existing cameras.
This collection method also solves the sometimes vexing problem of moving elements in tiled images. Often times when images are tiled, moving objects can appear in more than one frame of the image. This problem is solved with the wide swath and within-instrument tiling that occurs with this multi-lens “gigapixel” array.
Read a more complete story, including details on patent and licensing plans, on the University of Alabama, Huntsville website.
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That looks like a calibration nightmare.
Even the much simpler 7-lens Vexcel cameras has some unfortunate inaccuracies, so I can’t begin to imagine what this would have.
I also have a feeling that the 0.3 meter resolution cannot be improved by flying lower, due to the minimum speed of the aircraft which would blur the image. Besides very wide-angle imagery is not good for this sort of thing. I don’t get why they make a big deal out of having an ultra-wide angle camera.