Skip to main content

Theia develops innovative distortion-free ultra-wide-angle lenses

Today’s high-resolution cameras have many advantages if they have the right lens for the job. When that includes covering large areas or reducing cost by installing fewer cameras, you need a wide-angle lens. Fisheye style lenses with barrel distortion are routinely used to cover an ultra-wide field of view; however, they create a curved and distorted image which causes significant loss of resolution at the image edges. This presents a variety of issues for ITS applications such as difficulty in identification or recognition of objects and details.
October 26, 2022 Read time: 2 mins

 

To counter the drawbacks of fisheye-style optics, Theia Technologies has developed a suite of rectilinear lenses offering a different, ultra-wide field of view without the barrel distortion or loss of edge resolution characteristic of fisheye style lenses. Theia achieves this optically, without the use of image correction software or its inherent latency.

The company employs its patented Linear Optical Technology to create a family of multi-megapixel lenses that offer horizontal fields of view up to 135 degrees with very low distortion while improving the resolution at the image edge compared to typical wide-angle lenses.

Applications for Theia’s family of ultra-wide, low distortion lenses include providing great peripheral vision for situational awareness in navigation and remote operation of vehicles and robots used in a variety of ITS applications from logistics to assisted and unmanned vehicles. They capture wide areas at short distances such as in under-vehicle surveillance and shipping container identification, among many other imaging tasks, including applications in close-up applications such as ATMs, card-locked garage entries, and multi-door entryways where both high image detail and wide fields of view are required. Other applications for Theia’s family of ultra-wide, low-distortion lenses include effectively monitoring large areas like parking lots, multi-lane tolling stations, and warehouses.

Choosing the right lens for an application depends on many factors including field of view, required image resolution, multi-spectral capability, image format and mount, among others. To assist in lens selection, Theia offers an image resolution simulator and lens calculator that relates FOV, resolution, and object distance.

Visitors to the Theia website will find it also offers other tools and white papers for a better understanding of its lens technology and selection of the optimal lens for your application.

Content produced in association with Theia Technologies

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • DoTs can benefit from high fibre content
    January 14, 2020
    Existing fibre architecture may be one of the most important assets for DoTs going forward: Skyline’s Paul Lennon explains the importance of evaluating ITS network infrastructure maturity
  • Teledyne's Genie Nano is out of the bottle
    May 4, 2020
    Teledyne Dalsa expands the Genie Nano 5GigE camera portfolio
  • Developing ‘next generation’ traffic control centre technology
    July 4, 2012
    The Rijkswaterstaat and Highways Agency have joined forces to investigate what the market can do to realise an idealistic vision for traffic control centre technology. Jon Masters reports One particular seminar session of the Intertraffic show in Amsterdam in March was notably over subscribed. So heavy was the press to attend that your author, making his way over late from another appointment, could not get in and found himself craning over other heads locked outside to overhear what was being said. The