As the name implies, a panoramic camera can independently realize a wide range of cameras without dead-end surveillance. Its concept and primary products have been born for a long time, but mature commercial products did not formally emerge until 08. Because the current domestic security standards mostly focus on the simulation and network deployment, there is no unified standard definition for the panoramic camera, so that there will be problems with the degree of recognition in the implementation of certain projects.
In general, current mainstream panoramic cameras can achieve 360° and 180° monitoring effects by using lifting and wall mounting methods, while some cameras with only 120° to 130° viewing angles can achieve a more open view for customers. The area of ​​surveillance appeal can also be referred to as a panoramic camera (wide-angle panoramic camera).
Really practical high-definition panoramic camera can replace many traditional monitoring equipment investment, but in the final analysis it is just a "wide-angle" camera, the depth of field and focal length are very small, especially the fish-eye panoramic camera, so far can see the face of the monitoring The radius of the range is five meters, so you can't blindly look far and see the distance. In the actual project application, most of them will be used together with the traditional camera, which can achieve the purpose of monitoring the special area while focusing on the overall situation while saving hardware expenses.
Gao Sheng, Marketing Department of Shanghai Preceded Computer Technology Co., Ltd., said: “A good panoramic camera can replace the application of 6 to 8 traditional cameras, and can greatly reduce the labor and maintenance costs involved, for product-related services. Cost recognition is the biggest difference between users at home and abroad, which means that foreign users have more mature considerations on the quantity and results of installed products, compared with domestic applications, which are still in their infancy. With the deepening of related promotion, the recognition of future panoramic cameras will surely be improved, and this gap will also be gradually narrowed."
classification
The panoramic camera can be divided into two types. One is a fisheye panoramic camera which is equipped with a special sensor supporting a special super-wide angle fisheye lens and relies on an image correction technique to restore the image. Excellent price/performance ratio makes this kind of product occupy the mainstream market share, but the particularity of the fisheye lens will inevitably result in the waste of sensor pixels, and the distortion of the screen edges is difficult to achieve high definition, which means that the visibility within the monitoring range is limited. Coverage area; another product consists of multiple sensors with a special lens combination to achieve the panoramic function, this type of multi-lens panoramic camera because each sensor is a regular rectangular image, it does not need to correct the operation, but the corresponding need another Set of algorithm software that can achieve seamless stitching of pictures, and its high demand for the entire package, that is, set the camera's field of view angle and installation position have strict requirements. Because of the multi-lens and multi-sensor on the hardware, it is difficult to control the cost of such products, and the price is generally higher than the fisheye panoramic camera.
Fisheye panoramic camera
Zhang Leqing, General Manager of MOBOTIX China, summarized the fisheye lens products into the following three stages of development:
· Primary stage: The product only has the function of outputting panoramic images and quad screens;
· Intermediate stage: The output image can undergo certain deformation correction and virtual PTZ, but the effect of distortion and correction is not good, in addition to the lower resolution (less than 3 megapixels), the sharpness after image processing is not good. The use of traditional compression coding algorithms also makes video processing consume too much of the PC server resources;
Advanced stage: Product resolution can reach more than 3 megapixels, and it can flexibly perform image distortion correction and virtual PTZ as needed.
Fisheye panoramic camera architecture is not complicated, only involves the fisheye lens and image correction software. Among them, the fisheye lens is named after its front end is like a fish-eye. The focal length of the fisheye lens applied to the panoramic camera must be below 2mm. Currently, such lens products on the market are relatively mature. The fisheye panoramic camera has become a high-end technology product because of the difficulty in processing the original distorted pie chart and how to better provide humane services for back-end monitoring personnel, that is, the realization of two core technologies: image correction and virtual ptz. From the above we can also see that it is these two major technologies that determine the development level of the fisheye panoramic camera.
Specifically, as long as a fisheye lens can get a panoramic picture in the background, this original image is a distorted circular pie chart, which does not meet the normal viewing habits of human eyes and must be corrected to achieve the final two-part screen or four. Split screen monitoring needs. The virtual PTZ technology gives the user the experience of a fast ball monitoring - the ability to focus on observations, rotate images, and zoom in on any monitoring point within the scope of observation without mechanical components.
Fisheye panoramic camera three core technologies
Yu Xuehai, product manager of Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co., Ltd., said: "The idea of ​​image correction technology is not complicated. Generally, a single fan is drawn from the original pie chart, and some deformations are made according to the principle of proportion and perspective. The correction processing can be used to combine these separately processed fan-shaped images to obtain images that meet the monitoring requirements.For products with low demand, simple circular drawing can be performed directly on the circular pie chart, and images suitable for human eyes can also be obtained. ."
Although the core algorithm of each manufacturer is inevitably different, the central idea of ​​the image correction technology is to use a certain algorithm to integrate the graphics with severe distortion of edges into normal scale images suitable for viewing. The rationality of the algorithm used, the level of programming, and the final system resource occupancy determine the merits of this algorithm. As for virtual PTZ, pixels are captured inside the image to achieve functions such as enlargement and rotation. The main difficulty of the contrast correction algorithm is not how to obtain better image effects, but how to better integrate the firmware into the front-end firmware at the same time. With the back-end software, two-way virtual control of facts and post-event recordings is implemented.
According to the specific locations and methods of these core technologies, the current fisheye panoramic camera can be further summarized into the following three categories:
1. Software front-end firmware integration (software mode)
All of the camera's functional implementation software, including image correction, virtual PTZ, smart components, and compression algorithms, are all integrated into the camera's internal firmware. Future upgrades also require only updates to the front-end settings. At the same time, its back-end PC can also provide virtual PTZ and other functions, giving the user the flexibility to change the viewing perspective and the possibility of focusing. And because the same amount of computation is very different between the hardware crystal and software PC load (the same computing task, when it comes to the calculation matrix, it will occupy a lot of software resources, the hardware crystal operation is relatively faster.) This front-end integration greatly frees up resources for back-end servers and networks. Combined with a distributed architecture, this type of product can minimize the configuration of back-end servers when applied to large and medium-sized projects. In general, even large-scale projects require only one PC-side server, such as DAS, NAS, and so on. On the other hand, due to the technical limitations of the front-end firmware, it is expected that such a panoramic camera can only handle up to five million pixels. With the advancement of high-definition, whether it can break this bottleneck will be the biggest development problem for this type of panoramic camera.
2. Chip front-end implementation (hardware mode)
Taiwanese manufacturers have already developed chip products that can directly realize basic functions such as image correction and quarter-screen output. That is, manufacturers who are interested in fisheye panoramic cameras can directly integrate such chips and fisheye lenses. product.
All functions in this mode are also implemented in the front end, but unlike software front-end firmware integration, it does not allow the retention of original images and subsequent operations. After the user selects the proper function, the machine processes the picture inside the front camera according to the instruction, and then outputs it to the back end to realize the bi-screen or quad-screen effect.
The emergence of this approach has given some manufacturers that do not have their own R&D capabilities to be able to “closely contact†the panoramic camera, and it also applies to a certain range of low-end markets. However, all its functions are encapsulated in the finished chip. It is difficult for manufacturers to further upgrade themselves, or to develop new application functions. It also does not allow users to change the viewing angle or perform corresponding analysis and processing operations according to actual needs after the event. This has great limitations. Sex. The top priority in the future is to increase the flexibility of this type of product and consider whether it is possible to reserve space for rewriting and upgrading within the chip.
3, back-end software implementation
All functions of this type of panoramic camera are implemented by software installed on the back-end PC. The front-end camera is only responsible for capturing images, so the product has advantages in both cost and selling price.
Relying on the powerful processing power of the back-end PC, such products do not have the bottleneck of definition upgrade. While implementing basic multi-segment display, virtual PTZ and other functions, the preservation of the original image also enables more information collection in the later period. Processing work. On the other hand, such products have high consumption of back-end PC and network resources, and more back-end servers need to be configured when large-scale projects are used.
Multi-lens panoramic camera is a trend?
Multi-lens panoramic camera
This type of panoramic camera has multiple sensors packaged inside, and the panoramic effect is obtained by performing image mosaic operation on the divided screen. The current mainstream product architecture consists of four four-megapixel sensors, as well as individual short-focus lenses with a field of view of 45° or 90°, packaged in a single housing. The core technologies such as digital processing and compression are integrated in the front-end firmware, and the four separate screens are integrated into 180° or 360° high-definition panoramic images according to the user's requirements, and then transmitted from the network to the back-end management platform. Compared with the mainstream fisheye panoramic camera, the advantage of the multi-shot panoramic camera is that it is free from the focal length limitation to a certain extent, and the distance can be clearly seen under the same conditions. At the same time, it also has a virtual PTZ function, which can be used to perform functions such as peripheral cropping, intermediate restoration, and maintaining 180° expansion, to facilitate users to adjust the screen according to the monitoring focus.
ArecontVistion application engineer Cao Yaxi said: “Compared with the mainstream fisheye panoramic camera, the multi-lens panoramic camera does not have the limitation of pixels, and there will not be any gap between the sharpness of the middle and the edge. Our company has specially chosen the security industry. The dedicated chip completely abandons the redundant algorithms and space waste that are not related to security, and the underlying algorithm is developed independently.Therefore, although the image stitching and compression of the camera are all realized at the front end, its speed and network resources occupy very little. It will also be the future development trend of this type of product."
Due to the use of multiple lenses and sensors, the price of such products is higher than the fisheye panoramic camera, but the cost is still less than the direct installation of a number of traditional cameras, while it only has one IP address, which facilitates software licensing to solve problems. On the other hand, although this kind of product avoids the waste of pixels, but the stitching technology has a higher demand for the entire package, in which the selection of the angle of view, the structure of how to perfect match each other, the algorithm how to seamlessly stitch, All determine whether such products can achieve better development in the future. Because the cooperation of the lens cannot be physically perfect, it is impossible to avoid a conical blind zone just below the ceiling when lifting. After improvement, the tilt angle of the camera's internal lens can be adjusted, and the impact of this blind zone can be reduced to a certain extent according to the site conditions during installation. On the other hand, when the installation height is more than three meters, the optimal installation height is three to five meters. m), the size of the blind zone generated by the camera is basically similar to the size of the human head, that is, it does not have much effect on the actual monitoring.
In addition to the basic lens and core technology, the quality of a panoramic camera also depends on its choice of sensors. If the pixels of the selected sensor are too low, it will directly affect the final display effect of the corrected and stitched images. On the other hand, if the sensor with too high pixels is selected, it will cause excessive calculation pressure on the hardware. And according to different design ideas and product positioning, some flagship manufacturers do not design indoor monitoring infrared surveillance, while others choose dual-lens or electronic conversion to achieve night monitoring.
Because of the huge amount of information it acquires, plus software corrections, splicing techniques, and virtual PTZ's occupation of resources, the panoramic camera's resource consumption for the network and back-end systems is greater than for ordinary cameras. The front-end processing method has a small pressure on the network and the back-end, but the corresponding front-end resources consume a great deal and the product price is also high. On the other hand, the back-end software implementation rules test the endurance of the entire network and the back-end servers. Although the individual products are cheaper, the supporting service devices need to be increased accordingly. Therefore, in the early planning of the project, we should consider the capacity of the entire network and the project, rather than considering the input of the camera alone. The current distributed architecture is recognized as the most suitable for panoramic camera projects.
Current situation and future
The panoramic camera, as a fresh product, maintains a fixed growth of about 20% every year. Although it will not have large-scale explosive growth in the future because of its own characteristics, it may become a mainstream product in certain industries. Other industries are dispensable supplements. In the current promotion and application, the most important problem is how to realize the integration problem in the transformation of old projects and how to better publicize and promote the issue. Currently, there are not many manufacturers that can independently produce panoramic cameras on the market. However, as the acceptance of the market continues to increase, more manufacturers will surely join the competition in this fresh market.
Li Xin, sales manager of Parity Information Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., admitted: “This revolutionary panoramic HD surveillance brings completely different novelty experiences for security. However, it should be clear that panoramic cameras are not a panacea and their blindness is relatively clear. Degree and monitoring range are not meaningful, only the panoramic camera suitable for the project is a good camera, and now the panoramic camera has achieved practical application in more and more fields, and it has also brought some projects to reduce hardware input and other aspects. Practically speaking, of course, more applications will be collocated with the project to achieve the best monitoring effect with the traditional camera, and the overall development trend of the camera industry is similar to that of the HDTV, the network and the intelligent, but also the appearance and structure. , water resistance, explosion-proof, etc. will all go towards a diversified trend."
In general, current mainstream panoramic cameras can achieve 360° and 180° monitoring effects by using lifting and wall mounting methods, while some cameras with only 120° to 130° viewing angles can achieve a more open view for customers. The area of ​​surveillance appeal can also be referred to as a panoramic camera (wide-angle panoramic camera).
Really practical high-definition panoramic camera can replace many traditional monitoring equipment investment, but in the final analysis it is just a "wide-angle" camera, the depth of field and focal length are very small, especially the fish-eye panoramic camera, so far can see the face of the monitoring The radius of the range is five meters, so you can't blindly look far and see the distance. In the actual project application, most of them will be used together with the traditional camera, which can achieve the purpose of monitoring the special area while focusing on the overall situation while saving hardware expenses.
Gao Sheng, Marketing Department of Shanghai Preceded Computer Technology Co., Ltd., said: “A good panoramic camera can replace the application of 6 to 8 traditional cameras, and can greatly reduce the labor and maintenance costs involved, for product-related services. Cost recognition is the biggest difference between users at home and abroad, which means that foreign users have more mature considerations on the quantity and results of installed products, compared with domestic applications, which are still in their infancy. With the deepening of related promotion, the recognition of future panoramic cameras will surely be improved, and this gap will also be gradually narrowed."
classification
The panoramic camera can be divided into two types. One is a fisheye panoramic camera which is equipped with a special sensor supporting a special super-wide angle fisheye lens and relies on an image correction technique to restore the image. Excellent price/performance ratio makes this kind of product occupy the mainstream market share, but the particularity of the fisheye lens will inevitably result in the waste of sensor pixels, and the distortion of the screen edges is difficult to achieve high definition, which means that the visibility within the monitoring range is limited. Coverage area; another product consists of multiple sensors with a special lens combination to achieve the panoramic function, this type of multi-lens panoramic camera because each sensor is a regular rectangular image, it does not need to correct the operation, but the corresponding need another Set of algorithm software that can achieve seamless stitching of pictures, and its high demand for the entire package, that is, set the camera's field of view angle and installation position have strict requirements. Because of the multi-lens and multi-sensor on the hardware, it is difficult to control the cost of such products, and the price is generally higher than the fisheye panoramic camera.
Fisheye panoramic camera
Zhang Leqing, General Manager of MOBOTIX China, summarized the fisheye lens products into the following three stages of development:
· Primary stage: The product only has the function of outputting panoramic images and quad screens;
· Intermediate stage: The output image can undergo certain deformation correction and virtual PTZ, but the effect of distortion and correction is not good, in addition to the lower resolution (less than 3 megapixels), the sharpness after image processing is not good. The use of traditional compression coding algorithms also makes video processing consume too much of the PC server resources;
Advanced stage: Product resolution can reach more than 3 megapixels, and it can flexibly perform image distortion correction and virtual PTZ as needed.
Fisheye panoramic camera architecture is not complicated, only involves the fisheye lens and image correction software. Among them, the fisheye lens is named after its front end is like a fish-eye. The focal length of the fisheye lens applied to the panoramic camera must be below 2mm. Currently, such lens products on the market are relatively mature. The fisheye panoramic camera has become a high-end technology product because of the difficulty in processing the original distorted pie chart and how to better provide humane services for back-end monitoring personnel, that is, the realization of two core technologies: image correction and virtual ptz. From the above we can also see that it is these two major technologies that determine the development level of the fisheye panoramic camera.
Specifically, as long as a fisheye lens can get a panoramic picture in the background, this original image is a distorted circular pie chart, which does not meet the normal viewing habits of human eyes and must be corrected to achieve the final two-part screen or four. Split screen monitoring needs. The virtual PTZ technology gives the user the experience of a fast ball monitoring - the ability to focus on observations, rotate images, and zoom in on any monitoring point within the scope of observation without mechanical components.
Fisheye panoramic camera three core technologies
Yu Xuehai, product manager of Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co., Ltd., said: "The idea of ​​image correction technology is not complicated. Generally, a single fan is drawn from the original pie chart, and some deformations are made according to the principle of proportion and perspective. The correction processing can be used to combine these separately processed fan-shaped images to obtain images that meet the monitoring requirements.For products with low demand, simple circular drawing can be performed directly on the circular pie chart, and images suitable for human eyes can also be obtained. ."
Although the core algorithm of each manufacturer is inevitably different, the central idea of ​​the image correction technology is to use a certain algorithm to integrate the graphics with severe distortion of edges into normal scale images suitable for viewing. The rationality of the algorithm used, the level of programming, and the final system resource occupancy determine the merits of this algorithm. As for virtual PTZ, pixels are captured inside the image to achieve functions such as enlargement and rotation. The main difficulty of the contrast correction algorithm is not how to obtain better image effects, but how to better integrate the firmware into the front-end firmware at the same time. With the back-end software, two-way virtual control of facts and post-event recordings is implemented.
According to the specific locations and methods of these core technologies, the current fisheye panoramic camera can be further summarized into the following three categories:
1. Software front-end firmware integration (software mode)
All of the camera's functional implementation software, including image correction, virtual PTZ, smart components, and compression algorithms, are all integrated into the camera's internal firmware. Future upgrades also require only updates to the front-end settings. At the same time, its back-end PC can also provide virtual PTZ and other functions, giving the user the flexibility to change the viewing perspective and the possibility of focusing. And because the same amount of computation is very different between the hardware crystal and software PC load (the same computing task, when it comes to the calculation matrix, it will occupy a lot of software resources, the hardware crystal operation is relatively faster.) This front-end integration greatly frees up resources for back-end servers and networks. Combined with a distributed architecture, this type of product can minimize the configuration of back-end servers when applied to large and medium-sized projects. In general, even large-scale projects require only one PC-side server, such as DAS, NAS, and so on. On the other hand, due to the technical limitations of the front-end firmware, it is expected that such a panoramic camera can only handle up to five million pixels. With the advancement of high-definition, whether it can break this bottleneck will be the biggest development problem for this type of panoramic camera.
2. Chip front-end implementation (hardware mode)
Taiwanese manufacturers have already developed chip products that can directly realize basic functions such as image correction and quarter-screen output. That is, manufacturers who are interested in fisheye panoramic cameras can directly integrate such chips and fisheye lenses. product.
All functions in this mode are also implemented in the front end, but unlike software front-end firmware integration, it does not allow the retention of original images and subsequent operations. After the user selects the proper function, the machine processes the picture inside the front camera according to the instruction, and then outputs it to the back end to realize the bi-screen or quad-screen effect.
The emergence of this approach has given some manufacturers that do not have their own R&D capabilities to be able to “closely contact†the panoramic camera, and it also applies to a certain range of low-end markets. However, all its functions are encapsulated in the finished chip. It is difficult for manufacturers to further upgrade themselves, or to develop new application functions. It also does not allow users to change the viewing angle or perform corresponding analysis and processing operations according to actual needs after the event. This has great limitations. Sex. The top priority in the future is to increase the flexibility of this type of product and consider whether it is possible to reserve space for rewriting and upgrading within the chip.
3, back-end software implementation
All functions of this type of panoramic camera are implemented by software installed on the back-end PC. The front-end camera is only responsible for capturing images, so the product has advantages in both cost and selling price.
Relying on the powerful processing power of the back-end PC, such products do not have the bottleneck of definition upgrade. While implementing basic multi-segment display, virtual PTZ and other functions, the preservation of the original image also enables more information collection in the later period. Processing work. On the other hand, such products have high consumption of back-end PC and network resources, and more back-end servers need to be configured when large-scale projects are used.
Multi-lens panoramic camera is a trend?
Multi-lens panoramic camera
This type of panoramic camera has multiple sensors packaged inside, and the panoramic effect is obtained by performing image mosaic operation on the divided screen. The current mainstream product architecture consists of four four-megapixel sensors, as well as individual short-focus lenses with a field of view of 45° or 90°, packaged in a single housing. The core technologies such as digital processing and compression are integrated in the front-end firmware, and the four separate screens are integrated into 180° or 360° high-definition panoramic images according to the user's requirements, and then transmitted from the network to the back-end management platform. Compared with the mainstream fisheye panoramic camera, the advantage of the multi-shot panoramic camera is that it is free from the focal length limitation to a certain extent, and the distance can be clearly seen under the same conditions. At the same time, it also has a virtual PTZ function, which can be used to perform functions such as peripheral cropping, intermediate restoration, and maintaining 180° expansion, to facilitate users to adjust the screen according to the monitoring focus.
ArecontVistion application engineer Cao Yaxi said: “Compared with the mainstream fisheye panoramic camera, the multi-lens panoramic camera does not have the limitation of pixels, and there will not be any gap between the sharpness of the middle and the edge. Our company has specially chosen the security industry. The dedicated chip completely abandons the redundant algorithms and space waste that are not related to security, and the underlying algorithm is developed independently.Therefore, although the image stitching and compression of the camera are all realized at the front end, its speed and network resources occupy very little. It will also be the future development trend of this type of product."
Due to the use of multiple lenses and sensors, the price of such products is higher than the fisheye panoramic camera, but the cost is still less than the direct installation of a number of traditional cameras, while it only has one IP address, which facilitates software licensing to solve problems. On the other hand, although this kind of product avoids the waste of pixels, but the stitching technology has a higher demand for the entire package, in which the selection of the angle of view, the structure of how to perfect match each other, the algorithm how to seamlessly stitch, All determine whether such products can achieve better development in the future. Because the cooperation of the lens cannot be physically perfect, it is impossible to avoid a conical blind zone just below the ceiling when lifting. After improvement, the tilt angle of the camera's internal lens can be adjusted, and the impact of this blind zone can be reduced to a certain extent according to the site conditions during installation. On the other hand, when the installation height is more than three meters, the optimal installation height is three to five meters. m), the size of the blind zone generated by the camera is basically similar to the size of the human head, that is, it does not have much effect on the actual monitoring.
In addition to the basic lens and core technology, the quality of a panoramic camera also depends on its choice of sensors. If the pixels of the selected sensor are too low, it will directly affect the final display effect of the corrected and stitched images. On the other hand, if the sensor with too high pixels is selected, it will cause excessive calculation pressure on the hardware. And according to different design ideas and product positioning, some flagship manufacturers do not design indoor monitoring infrared surveillance, while others choose dual-lens or electronic conversion to achieve night monitoring.
Because of the huge amount of information it acquires, plus software corrections, splicing techniques, and virtual PTZ's occupation of resources, the panoramic camera's resource consumption for the network and back-end systems is greater than for ordinary cameras. The front-end processing method has a small pressure on the network and the back-end, but the corresponding front-end resources consume a great deal and the product price is also high. On the other hand, the back-end software implementation rules test the endurance of the entire network and the back-end servers. Although the individual products are cheaper, the supporting service devices need to be increased accordingly. Therefore, in the early planning of the project, we should consider the capacity of the entire network and the project, rather than considering the input of the camera alone. The current distributed architecture is recognized as the most suitable for panoramic camera projects.
Current situation and future
The panoramic camera, as a fresh product, maintains a fixed growth of about 20% every year. Although it will not have large-scale explosive growth in the future because of its own characteristics, it may become a mainstream product in certain industries. Other industries are dispensable supplements. In the current promotion and application, the most important problem is how to realize the integration problem in the transformation of old projects and how to better publicize and promote the issue. Currently, there are not many manufacturers that can independently produce panoramic cameras on the market. However, as the acceptance of the market continues to increase, more manufacturers will surely join the competition in this fresh market.
Li Xin, sales manager of Parity Information Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., admitted: “This revolutionary panoramic HD surveillance brings completely different novelty experiences for security. However, it should be clear that panoramic cameras are not a panacea and their blindness is relatively clear. Degree and monitoring range are not meaningful, only the panoramic camera suitable for the project is a good camera, and now the panoramic camera has achieved practical application in more and more fields, and it has also brought some projects to reduce hardware input and other aspects. Practically speaking, of course, more applications will be collocated with the project to achieve the best monitoring effect with the traditional camera, and the overall development trend of the camera industry is similar to that of the HDTV, the network and the intelligent, but also the appearance and structure. , water resistance, explosion-proof, etc. will all go towards a diversified trend."
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