Pumpkin HiPPiECam(TM) enables Fluid Lensing at NASA

NASA's Dr. Ved Chirayath's Fluid Lensing work as applied to imaging through water from the air is described at length in this ScienceDirect article entitled "Fluid lensing and machine learning for centimeter-resolution airborne assessment of coral reefs in American Samoa."

In 2015, Chirayath's group commissioned a pair of Pumpkin HiPPiECams (renamed "FluidCams" by NASA) capable of 90fps 2kx2k RGB and monochromatic 12-bit image ​capture, limited only by on-board storage. The two cameras were delivered on time and under budget.

Internal view of HiPPiECam/FluidCam, with Leica Elmarit-M 1:2.8/24mm ASPH lens

Packaged view of HiPPiECam/FluidCam, ready for flight onboard a UAV

HiPPiECam incorporates an Intel i5 processor running a Pumpkin image capture program on Windows 7, a Pumpkin SupMCU control module, dual SSDs in a RAID0 configuration, and a breakout board with multiple interfaces (Ethernet, USB, eSATA, etc.) to the i5. The imager interfaced to the i5 over USB 3. Pumpkin had a series of Leica 1:2.8/28 ASPH and Elmar-M 1:3.5/135 lenses tested at Olaf Optical Testing and fully characterized for field curvature, etc., so that the complete optical path could be optimized in post-processing.

Since then, Pumpkin has continued to create new high-speed image capture architectures. The latest is nVidia Tegra-based, runs Linux, has direct GPS geotagging support, runs from AC or DC power and supports multiple cameras with GeoTIFF and other supported output formats.