Gigapixel Camera Catches the Small Details

An anonymous reader sends this quote from Nature: "David Brady, an engineer at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and his colleagues are developing the AWARE-2 camera with funding from the United States Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (abstract). The camera's earliest use will probably be in automated military surveillance systems, but its creators hope eventually to make the technology available to researchers, media companies and consumers. ... AWARE-2 sidesteps the size issue by using 98 microcameras, each with a 14-megapixel sensor, grouped around a shared spherical lens. Together, they take in a field of view 120 degrees wide and 50 degrees tall. With all the packaging, data-processing electronics and cooling systems, the entire camera is about 0.75 by 0.75 by 0.5 metres in volume. The current version of the camera can take images of about one gigapixel; by adding more microcameras, the researchers expect eventually to reach about 50 gigapixels. Each microcamera runs autofocus and exposure algorithms independently, so that every part of the image — near or far, bright or dark — is visible in the final result. Image processing is used to stitch together the 98 sub-images into a single large one at the rate of three frames per minute."

Translation.

[Alex Belits]

Each microcamera runs autofocus and exposure algorithms independently

Translation: we just duct-taped together a bunch of standard camera modules, and did not bother figuring out how they work.

Why even stitch?

[2.7182]

What is the point of having the images stitched? Google maps doesn't need to. If the observer is going to look at the whole image then they can't look at it on a megapixel screen. The whole thing sounds fishy to me.