Deep-Sea Multi-Camera Recording With Luminance-Based Time Sync
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Solution Overview
Problem
Image recording apparatuses struggle to capture accurate images of marine organisms in the deep sea due to sudden movement caused by white light illumination, leading to high power consumption and inability to stay on the seafloor for long periods, and unsynchronized video images from multiple cameras.
Innovation Solution
The apparatus captures video images before and after lighting changes, detects luminance differences between frames, and synchronizes them based on luminance thresholds, recording synchronized images with metadata in a medium.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If white light is turned on to illuminate organisms for accurate color imaging, then image quality is improved, but organisms move suddenly causing them to exit the imaging view angle
Solution Approach 1:
The camera starts imaging a predetermined time before the white light is turned on, so that when the light illuminates the organisms, they are already within the imaging view angle. This preliminary action ensures that the organisms do not exit the frame when startled by the sudden light, while still allowing accurate color imaging when the light is on.
2Use of energy by moving object
If white light is turned on intermittently to reduce power consumption, then power consumption is reduced, but the camera cannot stay on the seafloor for a long period of time with accurate ecological representation
Solution Approach 1:
The white light is turned on intermittently at predetermined intervals rather than continuously. The camera captures images both during illumination periods (for color accuracy) and during dark periods (to reduce power consumption). This periodic action allows the apparatus to stay on the seafloor for extended periods while still capturing ecologically representative images that include both illuminated and natural dark state conditions.
3Productivity
If video images from multiple cameras are recorded in respective storages, then each camera can independently record, but the video images are not synchronized in time making post-processing difficult
Solution Approach 1:
A synchronization signal is transmitted from a master camera to slave cameras, and each camera uses this signal to adjust its timing. The synchronization status is monitored and feedback is provided to maintain accurate time alignment across all cameras, ensuring that images captured by multiple cameras correspond to the same moment in time while allowing independent recording operations.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
This method allows for synchronized recording of video images from multiple cameras, reducing power consumption and enabling long-term seafloor deployment while maintaining ecological representation.
Implementation Method 1
detecting, for each of the respective video images acquired from the plurality of cameras, a difference in luminance that has changed over entire frame areas between chronologically adjacent frames in the respective video images
Data Source
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AI summary
An image recording method in an image processing apparatus, includes the steps of acquiring, from a plurality of cameras, respective video images which the plurality of cameras start capturing in the sea before a first light that is lit in a first color is turned on and end capturing after a second light that is lit in a second color is turned on after the first light is turned on, detecting, for each of the video images, a difference in luminance between chronologically adjacent frames in the video image, associating times of frames between the video images on the basis of the difference, and recording the video images with the associated times in a recording medium.