SAFET Y
& SECURIT Y
SURVEILLANCE
there is a marked difference the further you “move to the back” or rather “zoom into the picture”, with a greater loss of detail, causing the picture to become blurry. While objects in the foreground are certainly displayed with sufficient resolution, when the user attempts to enlarge objects from the background, they appear as many ill-defined blocks. Let's consider an example taken from real life, e.g. look at an image of a large stadium. The faces of the people in the front rows are still recognisable but, when the image is enlarged, the faces in the rows farther back become blurred and unrecognisable. This is why, when we developed the Panomera®, one of our main objectives was to ensure that the resolution never fell below the specified parameters, not even in the most distant areas of the image.
Q: How is this high resolution possible? A: We are using a completely new lens and sensor concept. In conventional cameras, the pixels are used uniformly within the sensor, that is to say, the available meg- apixels are distributed evenly throughout the entire image. But the actual scene is not two-dimensional like the sensor, it is three-dimensional — and the expanse of the lateral and depth perspectives becomes progressively larger the far- ther back you go. Now, if the pixels are distributed evenly on the cam- era sensor, this means that the same number of pixels is availa- ble for capturing a much larger area than in the foreground of the image. And logically, as a result, more distant objects cannot be resolved any more when you zoom in. However, with Panomera® on the other hand, we can guarantee uni- form resolution over the entire object space. We do not use just a single optical device, but a multifocal sensor system, meaning several lenses with dif- ferent focal lengths. In this way,
we "slice up" the scene so that each area has the optimum focal length assigned to it.
20 th AN N I V ER S AR Y P AR T II/ S U M M ER 1 2
Q: What advantages does this have for monitoring stadia?
A: Panomera® works well both for very wide panoramas and for areas involving great distances. An entire stadium can be moni- tored permanently with just two Panomera® systems! In effect, it is as if you were to com- bine the advantages of an overview camera with a high optical zoom PTZ camera. Pano- mera® records the entire area continuously, like an overview camera, but unlike a PTZ camera with which only the currently active zoom area is recorded. At the same time you can move and zoom anywhere in the entire coverage area — and individuals are clearly recognisable even at distances of more than 160m!
Q: So, is the continuous recording of the entire surveillance area not standard practice? A: Until now, no. Of course, fixed dome or box cameras always record the whole of the area they are monitoring. But these cameras are not equipped with an optical zoom, so they are not suitable for monitor- ing expansive areas, or at least only as overview cameras. This is why a lot of PTZ cameras are being used at the moment. These can be used to zoom and move within the scenes. But at the same time PTZ cameras have a definite disadvantage, in they can only ever record the area that the operator is currently watching live. Let’s revisit the example of the stadium: if the operator is currently zooming in on the front left portion of the image, only this area is being recorded. So if an incident were to take place at a different location at the same time, it would not be possible to review it afterwards. With Panomera®, on the other hand, the entire scene is record- ed continuously and in maximum detail resolution — regardless of which area the operator is viewing ‘live’. This makes it pos- sible to analyse incidents after they have occurred.
Q: Couldn’t you also achieve this effect by using several HD cameras in conjunction with each other? A: An operator can work much more effi- ciently with a single, synchronised system than he ever could with just multiple HD
P AN S T AD I A
cameras strung together in line. The opera- tor would have to concentrate on lots of individual images simultaneously. Moreo- ver, the field viewing angles could never be synchronised with one another as well as is possible with a single, integrated multifocal sensor system. Quite apart from the fact that the operator would be engaged in a constant “battle for resourc- es” in order to obtain comparable resolu- tion. Another advantage of the Panomera® sensor concept is a substantially higher dynamic range. Panomera® works with several sensors, each of which selects its own exposure strategy in order to achieve ideal saturation. While with other cameras an average value is determined, Pano- mera® can make distinctions more effec- tively: with light areas exposed for a shorter time and dark areas for a longer time. As a result, situations with a large dynamic range can also be recorded with good quality, without overexposure or “drowned” black areas.
Q: If the entire scene is monitored by just one camera, is it only possible for one security operator to work with the camera or can several operators access it? A: In contrast to PTZ cameras, with which only one operator can control the camera, with Panomera®, an unlimited number of operators can navigate across the entire scene independently of each other. Although all operators are connected with the same camera, each of the individual users can select their view individually and zoom or pan as they desire. Or they can perform evaluations of the recordings at the same time. So analyses can be car- ried out by any number of employees at various workstations simultaneously. For example, one may be watching the over- view image live, another may zoom in on suspicious fans in realtime, while yet another is looking at the recording from an hour ago to see how the stadium filled up.
Q: Do you need enormous bandwidth for this? A: Owing to the so-called multicast capabil- ity, several users can view the images from Panomera® without requiring repeated
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