A Novel Hemispherical and Dynamic Camera for EVAs

The primary objective of this SBIR project is to develop a novel Hemispherical and Dynamic Camera(HDC), with unprecedented capability of optically unwrapping, thus can obtain directly the high resolution undistorted (unwrapped) 360?hemispherical video or still images without requiring any external computing resources for performing digital unwrapping. This novel technology would lead to ultra-compact, low-power, light weight, and high resolution hemispherical camera for EVAs.The unique Neo360 optics offers advantages over any existing technologies. The HDC camera can:(1) Produce unwrapped hemispherical images optically without using any external computational hardware and software, greatly reducing size, weight and power (SWaP) of the HDC.(2) Capture real-time video of seamless hemispherical surrounding scene using no moving components;(3) Unwrap the hemispherical image optically and the outputs images/video is directly viewable for human interpretation;(4) Preserve image quality via optical unwrapping - no digital re-sampling artifacts that deteriorate image;(5) Acquire hemispherical scene with full pixel resolution of imaging sensor (conventional 360?optics acquires circular images, making 42% active pixels of sensor useless);(6) Eliminate time delay caused by digital processing - Hemispherical video can be transmitted directly;(7) Improve the image transmission efficiency by 70% for EVA video relay.