Spinning Image Stabilization Gets Smooth High-Flying View from a Football Cam

Kris Kitani, a postdoctoral research fellow at Carnegie Mellon University, has developed a unique type of image stabilization that can actually transform the footage from a camera attached to the side of a spinning football from nausea inducing, to smooth fly over.

The video at the top shows the footage he collected when he attached a GoPro to the side of a football. On the left you have the un-altered version, and on the right the version with his software applied.

The software works by recognizing and pulling out frames that have the ground in them and ignoring those with sky. It then takes those ground frames and stitches them together to create the semi-smooth effect you see in the top right.

According to Kitani, the ultimate goal of the research is to “extend the frontiers of the spectator experience by capturing the excitement of being on the field through the ball’s first-person point of view.” He maintains that the camera tech to make this happen in the NFL already exists, but suspects that league’s strict equipment standards will ultimately hold the technology back.

(via Gizmodo)