Herself’s Artificial Intelligence

After a two-year collaboration with colleagues at NASA’s Ames Research Center, Carnegie Mellon University scientists unveil their Gigapan camera system this week. It’s a robotic device that attaches to any digital camera. The device enables the public to shoot interactive, multi-billion pixel panoramas that can be explored in great depth on the Internet.”We are going to change the way people browse for exploration, discovery and cultural understanding,” said Carnegie Mellon’s Illah Nourbakhsh, an associate professor of robotics. Nourbakhsh is co-director of the Global Connection Project, with project scientist Randy Sargent of Carnegie Mellon West. [ read more Introducing the Gigapan Camera ] 

The robotic camera mount takes hundreds of overlapping images to create the panoramas. The the software developed to go with the robot stitches all the images together. 

More information:

Gigapan
View some of the panoramas that have been taken
System enables any digital camera to produce interactive, multibillion pixel panorams
Google Earth GigaPan: Disappointing?

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