Computer Vision News - June 2018

Computer Vision News Application 34 Application: Altia Systems PanaCast by Altia Systems is the world’s first Panoramic-4K Plug-and- Play USB video camera for video- conferencing . We asked Co-Founder and CEO Aurangzeb Khan and CTO Ram Natarajan to share with us how their technology works and what makes it so cutting-edge. While traditional video conferencing solutions can be quite expensive and at the same time limit the visual perspective, PanaCast enables anyone using desktop or mobile devices to communicate in an interactive, real- time Panoramic-HD 180 degree field- of-view video that replicates the human panoramic perspective. The easy-to-use, portable camera is reasonably priced and works especially well in collaboration spaces and classrooms, delivering a natural video experience. Together, they build a completely new kind of e-vision system , which consists of an arrangement of three cameras, synchronized and optimized in real-time to create a very wide, immersive field-of-view. It generates a visual experience similar to how eyes see the world. Traditional cameras have been limited to an 80 ° field-of-view with low distortion. People have tried to overcome this for almost 70 years. The usual approach is to use an ultra- wide angle lens or fish eye lens, but this leads to several problems. First, it creates a very large amount of distortion. When people try to correct the distortion, it’s not linear, and the quality degrades. Secondly, this method still doesn’t represent how our eyes experience the world. “ The problem with traditional lenses in cameras - Natarajan explains - is that they are always manufactured with 50 to 70 degrees field-of-view. They cannot produce a larger field-of- view without distorting the image itself. Altia System solves this problem Aurangzeb Khan