When you think of the concepts of ‘Cameras’ and ‘Balls’ at the same time, something involving Annette Schwarz might come to mind, but this is far from what you may be thinking. Who hasn’t seen an amazing photo, like the one above, and wanted to be able to do it for themselves? It can now be possible using one of the most clever gizmos we’ve seen in some time: the “throwable panoramic camera”. Developed by the Computer Graphics Group in Berlin, it allows a user to take 36o degree pictures just by tossing it in the air.
How it works is simple, inside the ball are 36 mobile phone cameras, all set to go off at precisely the same time when the ball senses that it is at the height of a toss. As it detects that it is starting to fall (using an accelerometer), it fires all of it’s cameras, putting image data to storage. Then, using a custom application, users can put together some pretty stunning images.