Such unmanned aircraft, remotely controlled from the ground station, such as for example quadcopters, are used to take panoramic aerial images. For this purpose, in known aircraft usually multiple camera devices are arranged on a frame of the aircraft, wherein the camera devices, if possible, are arranged in such a way that fields of vision of the camera devices overlap one another at a distance to the aircraft, in order to allow for the imaging of the entire surroundings of the aircraft. In addition, it must be ensured that no components of the aircraft are located within the fields of vision of the camera devices, in order to not impair the panoramic image around the aircraft. In order to achieve this, the camera devices are usually, if possible, arranged as far to the outside on the aircraft as possible, so that the remaining components of the aircraft are possibly arranged behind the respective camera device.
The aircraft known from the prior art having camera devices for capturing the entire surroundings of the aircraft are best suited to create panoramic images of the environment from greater distances to the aircraft. The nearer the objects to be imaged in the environment come closer to the aircraft, the more difficult the imaging with the aircraft known from the prior art, as the different fields of vision of the camera devices intersect with one another only at a considerable distance to the aircraft, due to the spaced arrangement of the camera devices to one another, and form a visual area surrounding the entire aircraft in which all of the objects can be entirely imaged. Capturing and creation of panoramic images of the environment can however exclusively occur at the distance to the aircraft, in which the surroundings are entirely imaged and in which therefore, the fields of vision of the various camera devices in each case intersect one another.
For this reason, aircraft known from the prior art are not suited to capture and create panoramic images, for example in case of a closer fly-by to a building, in a fly-through among buildings or for example also through forests or the like, as in such imaging, the objects to be captured are regularly found outside the field of vision of the camera, so that these objects can each only partially be imaged, and the capture of a complete panoramic image of the entire surroundings of the aircraft at every point in time of the fly-by is not possible or only possible to a limited extent.
The field of vision of a camera device refers to the area or the volume of the object space or of the surroundings of the aircraft which can be captured with the camera device. When using a camera device with a rectangular photo sensor, the field of vision of the camera device is shaped like a truncated pyramid, wherein a tip of the pyramid is located in the focal point of the camera device on the objective side.
It is considered the object of the invention to further develop the aircraft known from prior art in such a way that as complete as possible depictions of the environment or panoramic images are also possible in the case of fly-bys as close to objects as possible.