Patent ID: 8605161
Filing Date: 2013-12-10
Classification: H04N

Abstract:
1. A method of optically-stabilizing an imaging system having a coarse line-of-sight (LOS), said imaging system including an image detector and an actuator configured to capture images of a scene along a fine LOS relative to the coarse LOS in a sequence of frames, wherein said scene is an object of interest in a background, the method comprising: responding to a first input of the imaging system's coarse LOS motion and an estimated scene motion, driving the actuator to control the fine LOS to cancel unintentional scene motion across the image detector and stabilize the object of interest on the image detector during image capture in each frame to substantially eliminate smearing in the image caused by detector motion relative to the scene; and responding to a second input specifying a desired intentional scene motion of the object of interest across the image detector, driving the actuator in time intervals that lie substantially between frames to control the fine LOS to provide the desired intentional scene motion to move the object of interest across the image detector in a discrete step from frame-to-frame, decoupling the intentional scene motion across the image detector from scene capture during frames and substantially eliminating smearing in the image caused by the intentional scene motion.