Embodiments relate to image capture, and more particularly, to a system and method for configuring image capture using an image capture device.
There are special problems of image capture for cameras that may be worn on a user's body or mounted on a user's bicycle or the like. These are, for example, subject to different modes of movement, depending where on the body the camera is mounted or on what part of the bicycle. Disadvantages arise when the particular type of motion encountered for a particular mounting of the camera cannot be catered for when a picture is captured with a camera.
It is desirable to improve image processing and image capture for such cameras.
Briefly described, one exemplary camera embodiment is adapted for detection of a mounting arrangement. The embodiment comprises detecting at least one of a plurality of mounting inputs associated with mounting of an image capture device; identifying one of a plurality of image capture settings associated with the detected mounting input; and controlling capture of at least one image by the image capture device in accordance with the identified image capture setting.
For a better understanding of the invention, and to show how embodiments of the same may be brought into effect, specific embodiments will now be described, by way of example, with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which:
a is a schematic perspective view of an image capture device operable to be mounted in a number of different locations;
b is a schematic rear view of the image capture device shown in
a is a schematic perspective view of a second embodiment of image capture device;
b is a schematic rear view of the second embodiment shown in
a and 5b are perspective and plan views respectively of a clip mounting device for the image capture devices;
a and 7b are schematic perspective views of the second embodiment of image capture device incorporating the strap attachment device;
A first embodiment of an image capture device 1001, also referred to herein as camera 1001, is shown in
b shows a rear view of the device shown in
There are several kinds of control that may be involved, and which may be provided by the image settings associated with a mounting arrangement. One kind of control is to configure the camera so that any subsequent capture of an image will have certain camera settings. That is, the camera is controlled such that it will take pictures with a particular field of view, exposure, etc. Another kind of control is over a rule for taking of pictures, where this process is automatic rather than under direct user control.
This will typically involve taking pictures when a particular condition is met—lapse of time since the past image captured, or presence of a particular object in the field of view (for which there will typically need to be regular capture of images into an image buffer and analysis of images in that image buffer to see whether a capture condition, such as the presence of a face, is met). Such capture conditions are addressed further below. A further kind of control is in determining post-capture processing of an image—either of a still image, a passage of video, or of images in an image buffer to produce a still image or a passage of video. Image stabilisation is an example of this kind of control.
The second user interface button 1004 is used to select a second mounting mode or arrangement. For example, a second arrangement may be on a user's chest pocket 703 (see
The third user interface button 1005 selects a third mounting mode or arrangement. For example, a third arrangement may be the location of the image capture device 1001 on the user's belt 707 (see
One of the major difficulties of motion filtering and motion stabilisation is to understand what the intentional motion of the camera is in order to preserve it in the stabilized output image sequence. For instance, when panning a camcorder, warping a current frame to a reference frame too far back in time would cause the “saw tooth” effect in the output sequence, resulting in a jerking panning movement.
Detecting the intentional motion patterns can also be useful to select the correct stabilization mode and parameters (see J. C. Tucker, A. de San Lazaro, “Image stabilisation for a camera on a moving platform”, Proceedings of IEEE Pacific Rim Conference on Communications Computers and Signal Processing, Vol. 2, pp 734-7, May 1993 and M. Oshima, et al., “VHS Camcorder with Electronic image stabiliser”, IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics, vol. 35, no 4, p 49-758, June 1989, all of which are incorporated by reference herein). For example, if the camera is stationary high frequency vibration should be totally removed, whereas when walking the filtering should be less strict.
Thus, except for the simplest of approaches or when the motion correction is through a mosaic representation, most methods have at least a simple detection of the intentional camera motion.
The techniques employed to detect the type of motion vary widely. For example, one embodiment employs classification of a time-sequence of motion measurements. For instance Oshima et al. (mentioned above) analyse the rotation angle 0 W of the camera with respect to a fixed point in space and depending on whether that is small, varying in one direction or varying in two directions, they infer whether the user is holding the camera stationary, panning or walking, respectively. In S.-J. Ko, S.-H. Lee, K.-H Lee, “Digital image stabilising algorithms based on bitplane matching”, 1998 International Conference on Consumer Electronics, pp. 617-22, August 1998 (incorporated by reference), a panning motion is detected by integrating a linear combination of a dampened global motion vector with the current vector; a panning camera has motion vectors in a dominant direction and hence by thresholding the integrated value one can determine if a dominant motion occurred over time. In Y. S. Yao, P. Burlina, R. Chellappa, T. H. Wu, “Electronic image stabilistion using multiple visual clues”, Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Image Processing, vol 1, pp. 1914, October 1995 (incorporated herein by reference), the authors do not classify motion, but rather separate rotational and translational components of the camera motion and leave only the rotational ones to be filtered, leaving camera translation unaffected. Tucker and De Lazaro (above) analyse the configuration over a brief period of time of four motion vectors in four quadrants and classify the motion into scaling, panning, and vibration using fuzzy logic.
The controls 1012 and 1014 are augmented by further controls 1002 operable to perform further functions typically associated with an image capture device, be it a still image capture device or video image capture device.
In
a shows a second embodiment of image capture device 301 having a lens 1006, a detector 1008 and a memory 1010. The image capture device 301 has a number of parts in common with image capture device 1001 (
First, second and third image capture device mounting location buttons 307, 308 and 309 respectively (see
The first mounting location button 307, when depressed, indicates to the image capture device 301 that a particular mounting position has been chosen. In the case of the first mounting location button 307 it may indicate that a hook and pile fastener strap 804 (see
a and 7b show the strap 804 secured to the second mounting location button 308, causing depression of a button by the mount plate 502 thereof. The different orientation of the strap in
When mounting the image capture device 301 on the handle bars 801 of the bicycle 800 (
a and 5b show a clip 401, which has a mounting plate 402. The mounting plate 402 is arranged to be attached to one of the mounting location buttons 307, 308 or 309 on the image capture device 301 shown in
The image capture mounting location button 309 as shown in
In one embodiment, all of the image capture device mounting location buttons, 307, 308, 309 are triggered by depression of the buttons 307, 308, 309. Depression of which button indicates to the image capture device 301 a likely orientation for the image device. Further indications may be given to the image capture device 301 concerning particular image stabilisation, picture taking or image capture frequency, picture or image capture exposure, field of view, based on expected uses of the device in the given location. In addition to stabilisation (discussed above) parameters may be varied by analysis of images based on subjects of likely interest. Techniques used may be similar to those as described in Y. Nakamura, J. Ohde, Y. Otha, “Structuring personal activity records based on attention: Analyzing videos from a head-mounted camera”, in International Conference on Pattern Recognition, Barcelona, September 2000, “Unsupervised Clustering of Ambulatory Audio and Video”, Clarkson, Brian P. and Pentland, Alex, (1998), Proceedings of the International Conference of Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing, Phoenix, Ariz., 1999 (all of which are incorporated by reference herein). These techniques may be used to select images of interest for use by control means 1009, such as a computing device, of the camera to analyse an image field for subjects of likely interest.
A further alternative, which could be provided in addition to the embodiments described above, would be to augment information from the controls 1003, 1004, 1005 or the mounting location buttons 307, 308, 309 by detection of the location or orientation of mounting attachments, such as the plate 402 on the clip 401 or the plate 502 on the strap 804. For example, based on initial measurements from motion detectors 810 (
An example of the way in which motion detected by the motion detectors may be classified can be found in “Context Awareness by Analysing Accelerometer Data,” Randell and Muller, “The Fourth International Symposium on Wearable Computers,” pp. 175-176, IEEE Computer Society, October 2000 (incorporated by reference herein). Any such motion detectors 810 (
The relevance of the mounting position of the image capture device 1001/301 can be taken into account, for example, by triggering the image capture device 301/1001 to capture faces when they are within view, based on a particular mounting position. For example, when the image capture device 1001 is head mounted, then faces are of more relevance, whereas faces would be of less relevance, or more difficult to capture successfully, when the image capture device 1001 was mounted on a user's belt 707 or on handlebars 801 of the bicycle 800. Furthermore, when mounted on handlebars 801, cars may be of less importance when identified, because they are likely to be encountered many times whilst a user is on a bicycle.
A mounting arrangement may be an indication of where and/or in what orientation the image capture device is mounted or secured, such as a location/orientation on a user's body or a location/orientation on a piece of equipment or a vehicle, such as a bicycle, controlled by the user.
Internal component, among others not shown, include the above described image detector 1008, processor 1009 and memory 1010. Also included are position sensor 812, orientation sensor 814 or motion detector 810. Image capture logic 816 resides in memory 1010 and controls image capture as described herein.
The mounting arrangement may be detected. In one embodiment, arrangement is detected by the use of a mounting position detection means, which may be at least one location sensor 812 (
The mounting position detection means, as described herein in the various embodiments, may be located on a side of the image capture device, on a base of the image capture device and/or on a rear of the image capture device.
The mounting arrangement may be detected by one or more sensors 812, 814, 816 (
The sensors for inferencing, in one embodiment, may include the image detector 1008 of the image capture device 1001. The processor 1009 is preferably operable to analyse the output of the image detector 1008 to infer a characteristic motion of the image capture device 1001, the characteristic motion preferably being linked to a given mounting location.
As described herein, associated with a mounting arrangement, there are image capture settings for use by the processor 1009 in controlling image capture. These may be, for example, based on a likelihood of a user showing interest in a given subject, based on images likely to be captured in a given mounting arrangement. The choice of image capture may be based on an output of at least one motion sensor 810, or of image stabilisation means of the control means. In one embodiment, the means includes selected ones of the above-described sensors 812, 814, 816, processor 1009 and image capture device logic 816.
The camera (image capture device) 1001 may be a still camera or may be a video camera, or both, depending upon the embodiments.
The processor 1009 in one embodiment preferably has access to information relating to a plurality of possible mounting arrangements, stored in memory 1010 or in another suitable memory medium. Each mounting arrangement may specify settings for the image capture device 1001, wherein the settings may be mounting location specific. The settings may include a motion stabilisation parameter, picture taking frequency, picture exposure, and/or field of view setting. The settings may be based on an expected type of use of the image capture device in a given mounting mode.
In some embodiments, the harness may be or comprise a clip or a strap or another fastening device.
In some embodiments, the mounting arrangement may be specifiable using a user interface, which may be one or more buttons/switches, operable to be activated by the user. The user interface may incorporate a button/switch for a given mounting arrangement, which button/switch, when activated, preferably indicates to the processor which mounting arrangement to adopt. User-selected mounting arrangements may include head-mounted, chest-mounted and/or belt-mounted arrangements.
The process of flow chart 900 starts at block 902. At block 904, at least one of a plurality of mounting inputs associated with mounting of an image capture device is detected. At block 906, one of a plurality of image capture settings associated with the detected mounting input is identified. At block 908, capture of at least one image by the image capture device in accordance with the identified image capture setting is controlled. The process ends at block 910.
In other embodiments, there is provided a method of configuring a camera comprising an image detector, a processor and a memory, the method comprising:
In other embodiments, there is provided camera apparatus comprising a camera mounting and a camera. The camera comprises an image detector, a processor and a memory. The camera mounting comprising a mounting arrangement to fix the camera mounting to a vehicle and a mounting arrangement to fix the camera to the camera mounting. When the camera is fixed to the camera mounting a mounting input is provided to the processor, wherein image capture settings associated with the mounting input are stored in the memory, and wherein capture of images by means of the image detector is controlled by the processor in accordance with the image capture settings from the memory when the mounting input is detected.
In other embodiments, there is provided a camera comprising an image detector, a processor and a memory. The processor is programmed to determine one input to the processor as representative of a mounting arrangement, wherein a motion stabilisation setting associated with that mounting arrangement is stored in the memory, and wherein images captured by means of the image detector are corrected for motion by the processor in accordance with the motion stabilisation parameter from the memory when the said one input is detected.
In other embodiments, there is provided a camera comprising an image detector, a processor, one or more motion sensors and a memory. The processor is programmed to determine from at least the one or more motion sensors one input to the processor as representative of a mounting arrangement, wherein image capture settings associated with that mounting arrangement are stored in the memory, and wherein capture of images by means of the image detector is controlled by the processor in accordance with the image capture settings from the memory when the said one input is detected.
The various embodiments described herein provide various methods and apparatus by which the mounting position of a image capture device may be used to specify what type of picture should be taken or to specify what some requirements of the pictures taken may be. Thus, different modes of mounting of an image capture device can be used whilst still obtaining reasonable images due to the functions described above that are triggered in particular mounting positions. The mounting position may be set by a user with buttons 1003-1005, may be detected automatically by mounting position buttons 307-309, or may be detected using other inputs such as those of motion sensors or by an analysis of images captured. A mixture of the above-described methods may also be used. All of the features described herein may be combined with any of the above aspects, in any combination.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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0314978.8 | Jun 2003 | GB | national |