IMAGE MOTION COMPENSATION – THE VEXCEL APPROACH

Abstract. Motion compensation in general and forward motion compensation in particular was an important milestone in aerial imaging when presented for film-based camera systems in the late 90ts of the last century. It focused on the forward motion compensation to enhance the image quality when flight speed and image scale produce such motion blur even at short exposure time. Another development and milestone in aerial photogrammetry, the active mount, contributed as well to reduce motion blur.

When digital aerial cameras replaced the film-based camera systems in the first decade of the 21st century, forward motion compensation (FMC) could be implemented as an electronic feature of the CCD sensors, namely the time delayed integration (TDI) feature, which worked fine and did not require a mechanical component. Not all cameras could make use of that but large format frame cameras like DMC and UltraCam were able to compensate forward motion blur exploiting this feature of the electronic sensor component.

Since CMOS sensors were replacing the CCD sensor component of digital aerial cameras there was a need to implement the FMC mechanism by another solution. One approach was based on a mechanical device able to move the sensor along the flight path of the aircraft like it was the approach for film cameras.

At that time Vexcel Imaging decided to develop a more versatile solution based on software and without any additional mechanical part in the camera body. This solution was designed to not only compensate for a uniform compensation to the forward motion but also for angular motion blur and for different scales in one and the same image. This is especially important for the oblique viewing direction of a camera when foreground and background of an oblique scene show different scales in one and the same image.

The need to compensate for motion blur is evident when large scale aerial imaging is required, and best image quality is expected. Motion blur is caused from the speed of the aircraft over ground, the image scale, and an angular component – the angular motion blur - caused from turbulences if they exist.

The magnitude of the forward motion blur can be estimated when multiplying aircraft speed and image scale and exposure time (e.g. speed over ground 75 m/sec, scale 1/10000 and exposure time 0,001 seconds leads to 0,0075 mm or 7,5 µm in the image). Different image scales result in different magnitude of motion blur. This is evident for oblique camera systems.