A 1.8 gigapixel video surveillance camera named ARGUS was built jointly by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) and the US Army. It is capable to pick out a sleeping dog in the Earth from the altitude of 20,000 feet (6 km). In other words, it can resolve details as close to six inches. Quite amazing! The ARGUS can be attached to drone (unmanned aeroplane remotely controlled) and taken to a height of 20,000 feet to observe 25 square kilometres at any instant. Thus entire New York City can be brought into surveillance by two ARGUS attached drones to hover over the city. The entire Manhattan is under observation 24x7.
Like ARGUS, AWARE-2 is another gigapixel camera. It was used to study the behaviour of tundra swans present in Pungo Lake, USA [1]. With AWARE-2 camera gigapixel snapshot was taken [1] and found 656 swans swimming in the lake and 27 flying above the lake at that instant. Scientists can use the snapshot to track individual swan or study the swans' flock (group) behaviour. Existing scanning panoramic camera cannot achieve this feat. Use of gigapixel is not confined to ecology alone. It can be applied in fields like urban planning, traffic control, forestry, archaeology and so on.
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| Gigapixel snapshot of Budapest city, Hungary. Inset: two landmarks building in the city. Zooming operation on gigapixel image helps us find the buildings. Image courtesy www.photographyblog.com [7] |
