http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/ Engadget Comments for Darpa develops a 1.8 gigapixel digicam and no, you can't 'check it out' http://www.engadget.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://www.engadget.com en-us Copyright 2012 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/]]>Feb 13th 2009 10:53AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/Low ranked.]]>Feb 13th 2009 11:11AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/Feb 13th 2009 11:52AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/Feb 13th 2009 10:57AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/
imagine how big that picture would be!]]>Feb 13th 2009 12:10PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/Feb 13th 2009 10:57AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/Feb 13th 2009 1:30PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/Feb 13th 2009 10:57AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/Feb 13th 2009 11:02AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/
]]>Feb 13th 2009 11:09AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/Feb 13th 2009 11:04AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/Does this have a practical use?]]>Feb 13th 2009 11:10AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/I can't wait for this to be used against me for my own money!!!]]>Feb 13th 2009 1:57PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/Feb 13th 2009 6:24PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/Feb 13th 2009 11:11AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/
The actual amount of raw data in a 1.8 gigapixel image would be something like 5 and a half gigabytes. However it is likely they are using some sort of compression, but it's probably lossless...]]>Feb 13th 2009 11:23AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/if compressed it would probably be about 1.5 GB. I have a 180 megapixel image on my PC and it's 148 MB in size.]]>Feb 13th 2009 11:23AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/Feb 13th 2009 11:53AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/
That's what, a bit shy of 3 minutes per image? Nasty. If it's doing 15FPS then no wonder it says it can't relay the whole image to the ground.

Assuming they're using the full-colour setting.]]>Feb 13th 2009 12:01PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/Feb 13th 2009 12:11PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/
Typical digital camera use 12 bits per pixel (each pixel does not have red, green, and blue; they alternate, with only one colour per pixel). That's 1.5 bytes. So an uncompressed image would be about 2.7GB. Lossless compression would take that down to somewhere in the less than 2GB range.

Or you could send it in JPEG. JPEG compression is usually quoted as 10:1, but if using a standard JPEG we'd need to interpolate it into a full-colour image. At this point you would also drop bit-depth using a suitable curve to compress the dynamic range into 8 bits. So our uncompressed image goes to 2/3 the size in losing bits, but 3* the size in RGB, so 5.4GB, apply that 10:1 and you have about 540MB for a standard JPEG.

More realistically, since this is a video camera (15fps), you'd want to use a video format which achieves much better compression. Double-layer Blu-ray discs store a good three hours of video at twice the frame rate, so you could assume about 6 hours at 15fps. The image size multiplier is about 1000 (2 MP to 2GP) so you should expect to be able to store about 30 seconds on that 50GB Blu-ray disc, or somewhere around 1.6GB/s. (Good luck finding a Blu-ray disc that reads or writes that fast.)]]>Feb 13th 2009 12:21PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/And seeing it as they say subdivides I guess it's doing onboard processing and transmits the parts that are of interest or are selected.
To quote the linked material:
"The camera is composed of four arrays, each containing 92 five-megapixel imagers. The other parts of ARGUS are the airborne processing system, which has to deal with a phenomenal torrent of data, and the ground-based element."

and:
"The volume of data is too great to be completely transmitted, but users will be able to define at least sixty-five independent video windows within the image and zoom in or out at will. The windows can be set to automatically track items of interest such as moving vehicles. In fact, the resolution is good enough for it to offer "dismount tracking" or following individual people on foot."
]]>Feb 13th 2009 12:52PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/
I think there is some confusion as to the pixels on a sensor. I'm pretty sure that each pixel on the sensor is comprised of 3 or 4 sub pixels depending on the type. here is a description I found on a CMOS manufacturer site:

Each image sensor pixel model includes color filters, parametrized microlenses, metallic interconnects and sometimes light shields above the silicon active regions and substrate. Each individual pixel is composed of four sub-pixels as can be seen in the figure to the left: two green, a red and a blue...

]]>Feb 13th 2009 12:56PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/


nerd]]>Feb 13th 2009 1:47PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/
Endgadget did an article on the LRU a while back. And yes I know that 15kw doesn't equal 100 kw. NG said it could combine 7 of the units together to get the 100kw beam.

So how long before we see one of these cameras with a phone attached?

]]>Feb 13th 2009 11:20AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/Feb 13th 2009 11:34AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/Feb 13th 2009 11:43AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/Feb 13th 2009 2:19PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/Feb 13th 2009 6:27PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/Feb 13th 2009 11:47AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/Feb 13th 2009 12:28PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/
Typical digital camera use 12 bits per pixel (each pixel does not have red, green, and blue; they alternate, with only one colour per pixel). That's 1.5 bytes. So an uncompressed image would be about 2.7GB. Lossless compression would take that down to somewhere in the less than 2GB range.

Or you could send it in JPEG. JPEG compression is usually quoted as 10:1, but if using a standard JPEG we'd need to interpolate it into a full-colour image. At this point you would also drop bit-depth using a suitable curve to compress the dynamic range into 8 bits. So our uncompressed image goes to 2/3 the size in losing bits, but 3* the size in RGB, so 5.4GB, apply that 10:1 and you have about 540MB for a standard JPEG.

More realistically, since this is a video camera (15fps), you'd want to use a video format which achieves much better compression. Double-layer Blu-ray discs store a good three hours of video at twice the frame rate, so you could assume about 6 hours at 15fps. The image size multiplier is about 1000 (2 MP to 2GP) so you should expect to be able to store about 30 seconds on that 50GB Blu-ray disc, or somewhere around 1.6GB/s. (Good luck finding a Blu-ray disc that reads or writes that fast.)]]>Feb 13th 2009 12:11PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/Feb 13th 2009 12:23PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/]]>Feb 13th 2009 12:22PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/Feb 13th 2009 12:52PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/Feb 13th 2009 1:02PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/You guys made my day.]]>Feb 13th 2009 1:02PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/Feb 13th 2009 1:13PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/Feb 13th 2009 2:06PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/
G R G R
B G B G

The array is called a Bayer pattern, after it's inventor, a Kodak scientist. It's also why we have digital artifacts like color fringing around highlights, and moire.

Foveon chips are another matter however, but they've got a ways to go yet and I doubt they'd be used in this tech, but it is possible.]]>Feb 13th 2009 2:13PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/Feb 13th 2009 2:20PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/Feb 13th 2009 2:57PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/Feb 13th 2009 2:49PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/Feb 13th 2009 2:50PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/Feb 13th 2009 8:44PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/Feb 13th 2009 4:08PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/Feb 13th 2009 5:52PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/Feb 13th 2009 5:58PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/13/darpa-develops-a-1-8-gigapixel-digicam-and-no-you-cant-check/Feb 14th 2009 3:34AM