RemoteReality receives $7.3 million in VC funding

to “the homeland security, defense and commercial security markets, and an advance that holds significant promise for enterprise business markets; for example, in video-conferencing applications.”

-read more in this company news release

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RemoteReality’s announcement recalls an interesting technology we reported on earlier this month. Note in particular the attempt to overcome fisheye distortion in order to improve video analytics:

Wide-angle lenses have long frustrated both surveillance professionals and optical engineers. The traditional rectilinear fisheye lens, while taking in images from a large area, also produces a tremendous amount of distortion, an effect that can be seen at home by holding a polished spoon above one’s head: “straight lines become curved, and the distances between objects become skewed,” explained Gyeong-il Kweon of Homan University South. “The challenge is to design a lens that collects light from a wide area and yields an image that is ‘perspectively correct,’ in that it accurately depicts the shapes and relative dimensions of imaged objects.” Easier said than done, but security mavens are relying on Kweon’s success. His new wide-angle lens has been designed with indoor security first in mind.

The new catadioptric lens, which Kweon says is cheaper and lighter than the fisheye products currently on the market, resembles a snow globe in the shape of the U.S. Capitol dome. Light enters the dome, encounters a V-shaped catoptric mirror, and is then reflected to a dioptric second lens that is said to resemble the statue atop the Capitol. That lens in turn produces the image of the large area at the exact location of the image sensor within the camera. Kweon is not the first to imagine such a system — academics had long tinkered with such an idea — but he is the first to develop a commercially-viable one.

One possible application is to use the lens as an ingredient of intelligent security systems,” Kweon explained. “In this scenario, the new catadioptric lens would capture a large swath of space, and a camera with ‘pan-tilt’ ability would zoom in on the region of interest (ROI), such as the location of an intruder. This can be more effective than a multitude of cameras watching their respective ROIs.” The field of view of Kweon’s catadioptric lens is 151 degrees, and can be increased to 160 degrees “by adding a little more complexity,” Kweon said.

Kweon’s findings appear in the December issue of Applied Optics.

-read more in this Asia News International report