Photography

NHK balloon camera aims to make bird's-eye shots easy

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NHK's gyro-stabilized balloon camera rig
NHK's gyro-stabilized balloon camera rig
NHK's gyro-stabilized balloon camera rig
NHK's gyro-stabilized balloon camera rig
NHK's gyro-stabilized balloon camera rig
NHK's gyro-stabilized balloon camera rig
NHK's gyro-stabilized balloon camera rig
NHK's gyro-stabilized balloon camera rig
NHK's gyro-stabilized balloon camera rig
NHK's gyro-stabilized balloon camera rig
NHK's gyro-stabilized balloon camera rig
NHK's gyro-stabilized balloon camera rig
View gallery - 11 images

For those who dream of one day shooting aerial footage without the bulky cranes and cables to hold everything aloft, Japan's NHK may have just the thing: a tethered, balloon-mounted, four-axis gyro-stabilized camera rig that weighs in at about 2 kg (4.4 lb), can soar up to 300 m (984 ft) and takes its commands from the re-purposed remote control for a toy helicopter.

Once airborne, the camera can "pan, tilt, and zoom as usual," NHK's Tsuyoshi Sekiguchi explained to DigInfo. "In addition, the gimbal works to keep the direction fixed, so even if the camera shakes, it stays facing the same direction, and the image is stable. To put it simply, four gimbal axes are controlled, and they have gyros, and the direction is kept constant using the gyro values."

Although versatile and easy to set up, the balloon platform does have certain limitations. Like most lighter-than-air craft, its large surface area makes it susceptible to strong breezes, so the NHK rig is limited to operating at wind speeds of 7 m/sec (about 15 mph) or less. The balloon's top payload is about 4 kg (just under 9 lbs) so only smaller cameras can go aloft for the time being. The engineers did add a safety mechanism that brings the rig safely down should its tether get cut, so at least worries about losing everything are minimized.

NHK's gyro-stabilized balloon camera rig

As the video below shows, the rig is fairly adept at damping unwanted motion, especially at more modest elevations. "The height actually used for a bird's-eye view is about 30-50m (98-164 ft) because that's the most practical altitude, so we've designed this system to work stably at that height," Sekiguchi added.

Currently there's no word on price point or availability, but NHK claims ease of use and cost reduction were two big motivations for the design, so if all goes well, we may be seeing a lot more of this technology at games and big events in the not-too-distant future.

Source: DigInfo

View gallery - 11 images
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5 comments
Carlos Grados
I want one of these!
marosini
very nice and desirable, but one word comes to my mind: WIND. (and helium price, btw)
Slowburn
Not the design I would build but I wonder what the maximum load would be if you filled it full of hydrogen.
GadgetGeek
I wouldn\'t connect it to a baloon at all... why not a quadracopter rig instead? For movies or promotional video shoots outdoors... for indoor major sporting venues the balloon would work with no worries of wind... they fly these blimps indoors at games today.
Slowburn
re; GadgetGeek
Passive lift is far more reliable.