Automatic pivoting in a wide-angle video camera

摘要

A system and method for automatically rotating a view of a wide-angle video camera. Preferred embodiments include automatic rotating of a stereographically projected view using a transformation engine which is capable of extracting a plurality of views under a remote pan tilt zoom (PTZ) control. In one example embodiment, when the center point of a video image of a selected view or region of interest is tilted through a direction which is perpendicular to the plane of the camera mounting (i.e., vertical when the camera is mounted on a ceiling) then the output image is automatically rotated 180 degrees about the pan axis. In preferred embodiments, the control circuitry then temporarily reverses interpretation of the tilt axis controls (for example, from PTZ controls), thereby allowing the view to tilt uninterrupted in the same direction past the auto-pivoting point.

主权项

1. A method of automatically pivoting a view in a stationary overhead mounted wide-angle video camera comprising the steps of:
capturing a wide-angle image using the stationary overhead mounted wide-angle video camera which does not have any pan or tilt movement; automatically generating a virtual camera view from a virtual camera, which is not a physically moveable camera, corresponding to a portion of said stationary overhead mounted wide-angle image via a transformation engine within the video camera, wherein said virtual camera view corresponds to a PTZ state in a generated transformed image; and automatically generating a 180 degrees pan control to steer said virtual camera view when virtual camera view tilts beyond a preset tilt angle.