Panospheric Camera

What's special about this camera?

The panospheric camera helps you to feel as though you are riding on-board Nomad while exploring the Atacama Desert. This camera is able to see in all directions at the same time, just like if you were to have eyes all the way around your head! Before this technology, it was normal to only return one view from on-board a robot, which made it difficult for lots of people to truly participate in "tele-robotics".

How does it work?
Instead of pointing the camera at the object we want to see, the camera on Nomad is pointed upwards at a ball-shaped mirror. The reflection in the mirror gives a very warped view of the world around Nomad, like the picture above. So, once the images are transmitted via satellite from Nomad to the Carnegie Science Center, they must be de-warped so they can be displayed like the one to the right.

Can you believe that...

Each image taken by the panospheric camera has over 8,000,000 bits of information about the world surrounding Nomad, and a picture is taken 6 times every second...thats nearly 85,000,000,000,000 bits over the course of the mission!

Want to see how it works? Try it yourself...

Look at the reflection from the back of a spoon, what do you see? You can see all around you without turning your head. This is how Nomad's panospheric camera works!

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Last Modified on: Fri Jun 13, 1997