After the transition from analog to IP video surveillance over the last few years, the industry is currently in a phase where multi megapixel (MMP) cameras receive all the buzzat security shows.This tendency created the market for a new surveillance camera type: panoramic cameras. A singlecamera covers an entire area continuously without leaving any blind spot. Panoramic cameras can beinstalled on a wall to give a 180° panoramic view or on a ceiling to give a 360° view to cover the fullarea below that ceiling. Panoramic cameras transformed from a product with great potentials into a key component of videosurveillance systems. The extremely wide field of view together with an extremely high resolutionbrings a larger coverage than conventional cameras.Two panoramic styles: Multi imager vs. panoramic lens Panoramic security cameras are basically available in two types: Fisheye lenses canform the image of the full hemispheric region located in front of the lens. Such lenses form a circularfield of view of 180° horizontally and 180 ° vertically. If the sensor is large enough to capture thisimage, the full hemispheric region in front of the camera is captured. This is called a 360° camera. Thecircular image fits on the sensor and has a field of view of 180° horizontally and 180 ° vertically. If thecircular image fits within the length of the sensor, but is bigger than its width, then we have a 180°camera. The camera has a field of view of 180° horizontally, but less than 180 ° vertically. Panomorph lenses are special type of fisheye lenses which forms an image ellipse instead of animage circle. The advantage is that such lenses can make use of more pixels of the image sensorcompared to a traditional fisheye lens. 360° cameras are expected to be used as a supplement to conventional security cameras. Thepanoramic camera is used to provide an overview of a certain area and conventional cameras areused to provide details in a narrower scene. Panoramic camera Conventional fixed camera Panoramic cameras can be used as digital PTZ cameras that monitor an entire area. The operator canpan tilt and zoom digitally to a certain part of the scene without losing sight on other regions of interest.A panoramic camera beats a PTZ camera by monitoring and recording all events and activities in alarge area simultaneously. Where a PTZ camera focuses on a specific part of an area, can apanoramic camera provide a recording of the full area. On the other hand, a typical scenario is to use a 360° camera for monitoring one area and a PTZcamera is used to zoom in on a certain event in that area. However, panoramic camera has addedvalue with conventional cameras; panoramic camera has a tactic role while PTZ camera has anoperational role: ‐ The size of a panoramic camera is a fraction of the size and weight of a PTZ camera ‐ Panoramic monitor and records full area all the time. This means live and retrospective accessto a fully covered area. A PTZ camera can only show and record one part of the scene atonce. Resolution is the number of pixels that can be displayed. If the number of pixels on the sensor is low,the image resolution will be low, and details are not visible. Low resolution leads either to pixilated orto blurred images in places where panoramic lens distortion correction algorithms need to expandimages. On the other hand, if a sensor with more pixels is used it will require a significantly highercomputing power. The introduction of megapixel security cameras has improved general image quality and improves thequality of panoramic cameras. This takes away some arguments to use multi imager cameras,because with the current sensors and lenses available in the market, security companies can providesovereign performance. The resolution of a security camera using a fisheye or panomorphic lens is not as straightforward asconventional security cameras. A panoramic camera using a 12MP sensor will not provide a full 12MPresolution. The optical circle of the lens is smaller than the active image area of the sensor (as wasseen in the drawings in section about fisheye lenses) and therefore does not cover all active pixels.The effective resolution of the image is the amount of pixels that fit within the optical circle. Anexample: let’s assume a 12MP sensor with 4000x3000 pixels and a size of 6.20x4.65mm. The 360°optical circle of the lens used has a diameter of 4.1mm. This would result in square that has a 7.0MPresolution with an active area of the circular image of 5.49MP. This often results in resolution gamethat security camera manufactures like to play. Is the panoramic camera really providing a 5MP imageor this is just the sensor’s native resolution? Besides details, the sensor in a security camera is also responsible for the dynamic range and low-lightsensitivity. The usability of a panoramic image is highly dependent on the dynamic range of thesensor. With a panoramic camera the likeliness to have bright and dark areas in the field of view ismuch higher. A low dynamic range – either too dark or too bright images - will not be able to showdetails in all areas of the scene. A high dynamic range enables the user to see details in both brightand dark areas. Single exposure wide dynamic range is applied to reveal all details in dark and bothbright parts of the scene. Cameras equipped with a fisheye or panomorphic lens produce video that has a circular shape with ascene that is optically distorted. Image correction is needed to create an optimized useful imagewithout distortion; this is called dewarping. The dewarping algorithm actually remaps the pixels in thescene to optimize the image and remove distortion. The algorithm can offer various image display possibilities, also could a dewarping library. Some of those options are a panorama view, a surround view or even real time PTZ viewing. The various video viewing modes allow the user to control the 180° or 360° images from a panoramic surveillance camera and guarantee a distortion-free video. Additionally it provides the freedom to define custom definable Regions of Interests (ROI) by adding presets. Together with a multi megapixel resolution, dewarping requires a significantly higher computing powerand higher resource consumption than ordinary cameras.The computing power determines the time needed to process the image and its transmission speed(latency). Dewarping can be done via a special dewarping algorithm on the camera (edge dewarping)or on the pc-side via a separate video client. The 4 main elements need to be carefully balanced areResolution, Frame rate, De-warping quality and De-warping mode possibilities. Edge dewarping means that camera itself can dewarp the images before sending them to VideoManagement Systems (VMS). Users just need to select the dewarped video viewing mode, and theedge dewarping can be adjusted automatically. Normally, a special Video Client or VMS will beneeded to do the image correction when the edge dewarping is not available. This involves hardwareand maintenance costs. Edge dewarping is cheaper. Dewarping requires a high computing power. This is generallyprovided by expensive pc’s in an expensive system. With edge dewarping, dewarping is donein the camera rather than using the computer's CPU. This significantly reduces the rocessingpower needed on a pc.It is not needed to buy more or more expensive equipment to process the image and allinformation that comes with it. This additional equipment would put pressure on thecustomers’ budget when buying panoramic cameras. Easier integration. Most panoramic cameras require a special Video SDK for dewarping, thismakes integration to VMS challenging. The VMS will need to support the special Video SDK.This locks down the systems to a particular dewarping enabled VMS and causes bad or no Virtual cameras. Having edge dewarping allows sending the dewarped images as separatestreams. By doing this can lower the bandwidth and make the system to be more flexible. Itcan offer a different field of view to all users with access to the security surveillance system.The security guard could have access to all streams, but it needs to confront people entering astore with only stream with the virtual camera facing the entrance. A very strong feature that makes panoramic surveillance camera even more useful is by applyingIntelligent Video Analysis (IVA) on the video. IVA enables detecting, tracking, following and analyzingall movements on a full 360° blind spot free scene, the objects and persons in the entire space of storeor warehouse could completely be included in the scene. The other benefit by using panoramic lenswith IVA is no need to combine the analysis done on multiple fixed cameras. IVA tracks multiple actions within an entire area, whereas a PTZ follow one movement and miss theothers not in the current FOV. The operator determines the FOV, whereas a panoramic camera hasthe entire overview continuously.IVA helps surveillance operators focus on attention by identified areas. Also observing an entire areaby single person pushes concentration to the limit – after only 20 minutes, an operator can miss asmuch as 90% of the activity in a scene. Real-time IVA processing identifies alert conditions, giving theinformation it needs to react swiftly and take action. As an example on the use of IVA and panoramicsurveillance, airport is a suitable location to execute the function. Panoramic surveillance cameras areinstalled on a strategic location where it monitors the customs officers’ desk, people enter, queuingand leaving this area. Imaginary lines are added to the scene to define restricted areas. Whensomebody passes this line, it alerts the operator by sending an alarm. The operator can focus on thatarea and follow the person through the entire area without losing sight of this persons or having toswitch to other cameras. Simultaneously, the other areas in the scene are being monitored withoutlosing information. What is the FlexiDome 7000? Check out the "low profile" Flexidome 700 IC in this video at the 23 second mark Dewarping Panoramic Cameras in Bosch Video Management System (BVMS) A Bit More Technical...The ability to see everything in a single camera image is a major benefit. Blind spots can seriously undermine the reliability of your video surveillance solution. From now on, you never have to deal with blind spots again. Panoramic cameras offer full 180-degree or 360-degree overview of a particular area in one simple view.
Panoramic surveillance
(1) Panoramic cameras that use a single extreme wide angle lens of up to 360°.
(2) Multi imager surveillance cameras that stitch the separate video streams from each sensortogether in one image. These cameras usually have three or more lenses/sensors.
Panoramic lenses: fisheye or panomorph
Panoramic vs. conventional cameras
‐ Wider field of view
‐ No blind spots
‐ Tracking of persons or moving object through an entire room or area
‐ Lower installation costs (and thus TCO) since only one camera can cover an entire area.
‐ Focus on specific area with full resolution (e.g frontal identification). In essence, fixed camerasgive more useful pixels per image area than the panoramic cameras made with the samesensor.
‐ No image distortionPanoramic vs. PTZ
‐ Panoramic cameras can monitor and record multiple regions of interest (ROI) at once,whereas a PTZ camera can only monitor one ROI at a time.
‐ PTZ cameras have an OPTICAL zoom that provides a larger range. In certain cases, such asrooftop surveillance, this is better than the DIGITAL zoom on panoramic cameras.
‐ A clean and stylish aesthetics design is a key driverfor buying a panoramic camera. Compare with a big heavy PTZ camera, a panoramic cameracan be installed at any location, whereas a PTZ is more intrusive and can affect aesthetics ofthe building.Resolution
Dynamic range and sensitivity
Dewarping – distortion free viewing and recording
Edge vs. pc side (client) dewarping
integration with 3rd party software. This limits the wide implementation and use of panoramiccameras. Edge dewarping allows the user to see a dewarped directly from the camera whicheases the work and installer or integrator need to do.
Intelligent Video Analysis
Bosch Solutions and Tools for Panoramic Applications
Download the Panoramic Surveillance White Paper here
Bosch FlexiDome Panoramic 7000
Bosch FlexiDome Panoramic 5000
FAQs
What is the difference between a 360-degree camera and a 180 degree camera? ›
180-Degree Cameras: These cameras are suitable for capturing a wide but not complete view. They may require multiple cameras to cover an entire area or room effectively. 360-Degree Cameras: These cameras can cover an entire space without any blind spots, providing comprehensive coverage with a single camera.
Are 360 security cameras worth it? ›360-degree cameras are a great choice when you want to reliably cover a large area for later review. Use 360-degree security cameras when you want to: Cover open, unobstructed spaces. Get panoramic visibility with no gaps or blind spots.
Can panoramic camera cover an angle of view? ›Panoramic cameras can be installed on a wall to give a 180° panoramic view or on a ceiling to give a 360° view to cover the full area below that ceiling. Panoramic security cameras are basically available in two types: (1) Panoramic cameras that use a single extreme wide angle lens of up to 360°.
What is a 360-degree panoramic camera? ›360-degree cameras typically have multiple, wide-angle (“fisheye”) lenses arranged in a carefully designed circular geometry, which allows them to capture a complete panoramic view with a single synchronized exposure. Different manufacturers use different hardware designs, with two major design approaches.
What does 360 vs 180 mean? ›"complete 360" If you love chocolate one day and hate it the next, you've done a complete 180. In this case, doing a complete 180 means completely changing your mind. But if you do a complete 360, you're right back where you started, so bring back the chocolate already!
What does a 180 degree difference mean? ›A 180-degree change / a 360-degree change
A circle has 360 degrees, so a 180 degree change (being half of 360 degrees) means you're now headed in the exact opposite direction.
In simple terms, panoramic cameras give a much wider field of view than standard cameras, from wall mounted 180-degree, to ceiling mounted 360-degree overview.
What lens is best for panoramic shots? ›A standard lens (one that is neither too wide nor too long) is perfect for when you shoot panoramic photos, as there's minimal lens distortion, resulting in more realistic panoramic photos. Choose a lens (or focal length on your zoom lens) of between 35mm and 80mm, depending on how close your subject is.
What is the market for 360 degree cameras? ›The U.S. 360 degree camera market size was valued at US$ 0.27 billion in 2022 and is predicted to reach over US$ 1.90 billion by 2032, growing at a CAGR of 21.80% between 2023 to 2032. Based on the region, the North America dominated the market with highest market share in 2022.
Who needs a 360 camera? ›For those who have small children or who want to capture memories on a trip or outdoors, it is good to have a 360 degree camera so you can shoot without worrying about composition or settings, and also keep one hand free.
What is the difference between a 180 and 360 turn? ›
On the one hand, if you make a turn, and measure how much your new heading differs from your old heading, it is correct to say that a 180° turn constitutes an about-face, and a 360° turn leaves you facing the way you started.
What is the difference between 180 and 360-degree appraisal? ›The 180-degree model suggests collecting feedback from supervisors, peers, clients and the individuals themselves, [3] while 360-degree adds upwards feedback from team members the person is responsible for.
How do you know if an angle is 180 or 360? ›Lesson Summary
A straight angle always measures 180 degrees. Straight lines are examples of straight angles. A full angle always measures 360 degrees. A whole circle or pie is an example of a full angle.
A 360-degree feedback is where your raters include people at all levels of relationship with you, i.e. bosses, peers/colleagues, as well as direct reports. A 180-degree feedback, on the other hand, is where your raters are at the same level as you (peers or colleagues), and a person you report to.