Fraunhofer develops OmniCam, a 360º panoramic camera

The OmniCam will allow viewers to select a camera angle on their next-generation PCs, tablets or televisions or enjoy a 360-degree panorama without the typical aberrations that similar solutions usually produce.

He Fraunhofer Institute has improved its OmniCam, an interesting multi-angle panoramic camera system that allows you to capture a 360-degree view.

The OmniCam will allow viewers to select a camera angle on their latest generation PCs, tablets or televisions or enjoy a 360-degree panorama without the typical aberrations that similar solutions such as those used by Google's popular Street View service usually produce. The Fraunhofer Institute's proposal barely weighs 15 kilograms (compared to 80 kilograms for its predecessor), so it can be easily carried by one person and mounted on a tripod. Located, for example, on the sidelines of the field of play in a soccer match, the camera would offer a panorama of both the field and the stands. Fraunhofer has not only improved the weight of its first developments but has also reduced its impact since the first OmniCam took up around one and a half square meters of space and sometimes obstructed the view of spectators in the stadium. The latest version barely takes up the space of an ordinary television camera.

The system is made up of ten cameras pointed at a mirrored dome. Unlike systems such as Street View, where each camera points in a direction, falsifying the perspective of areas of the image between one camera and another, in the case of the OmniCam all the cameras are arranged facing the upper mirror, composing an image in which the images even overlap minimally, giving a seamless panoramic sensation around the system.