A camera the size of a tennis ball shoots a stabilized video in flight

The Squito camera , the prototype of which was demonstrated by Boston inventor Steve Hollinger, is not the first ball camera that shoots circular panoramas in flight. About two years ago, a similar camera was created by Jonas Pfail from Berlin Technical University. However, Pfayl's camera took only one panoramic shot at the top of the trajectory. Squito can do much more.



Squito is equipped not only with an accelerometer, but also with gyroscopes, and a GPS-sensor. During the flight, the Squito keeps track of where each of its lenses is looking and can choose which direction to shoot. When one camera turns away from a given subject of shooting, the second one enters, and so on. Video and camera photos are automatically rotated to the correct orientation and glued together. So it is possible to get a stabilized video - as if the flying camera was always looking at one point. In addition, having saved all the frames from all the cameras during the flight, along with the ball orientation data during each frame, you can recreate a circular panorama at any point of the trajectory.


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The camera is enclosed in a durable body the size of a tennis ball. The image is recorded on the built-in flash memory or transmitted wirelessly to a laptop or smartphone of the host. The inventor assumes many options for using his camera - not only as a toy, but also for video surveillance, search and rescue operations, operational intelligence. Squito can shoot not only in the visible, but also in the infrared.

Another possible application is to build such cameras into real tennis, football and other balls, in order to use the unique possibilities of shooting “from the point of view of the ball” during sports broadcasts.