Designing a Low Power and Lightweight Digital Camera Array

Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) Engineering, 2005-06

Liaison(s): Kevin Alley ’05
Advisor(s): Erik Spjut
Students(s): Mark Brenneman (TL), Amanda Rainer, Chris Acon (F), Tyler Brown (F), Daniel La Valle (S), Josiah Larson (S), Christopher Woodruff (F), Stephen Yu (S)

Traditional gimbaled cameras mounted on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are undesirably heavy and require a significant amount of electric power. The team designed and simulated a digital camera array with multiple imaging modes and built a demonstration prototype. The array of cameras imitated the functions found on a gimbaled pan-tilt-zoom camera in a low-power, lightweight package.