Up until now, interacting with a picture meant staring at a static image. However, Carnegie Mellon University’s (CMU) Gigapan aims to turn staring into exploring. The Gigapan redefines the concept, creating interactive, zoomable panoramas. With the robotic device, which captures high-resolution panoramas with simple digital cameras, the viewer creates snapshots and artistic images beyond the photographers’ intention. Recall the Esper unit from Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner,” the 1982 screen adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.” Harrison Ford’s character, Detective Rick Deckard, uses an “Esper” to explore and analyze photos, calling out “enhance” and detailing coordinates to the computer. The Gigapan, now in the hands of photographers at BBC World, The New York Times, National Geographic and The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette operates under the same principal.

Take Laura Tomokiyo’s panorama of Pittsburgh’s Children’s Museum. At first it appears as a fixed and distant image that encompasses exhibits in the museum. However, once one starts using the interactive features, one easily becomes engrossed. Either with snapshots created by Tomokiyo, a project scientist at CMU’s Robotics Institute, or by hunting through the panorama, exploring the photo connects users to the exhibit to a point where the titles of magazines on a rack in the far back of the room are as visible as the Mini car in the forefront on the far right side. Each individual’s viewing of an image on the Gigapan Web site leads one to uniquely delve into tiny details that others might not reveal.
Excerpt from the Gigapan Website. Photo by Laura Tomokiyo. “You can visit the museum virtually, which is a new aspect, which has tremendous potential,” explained Tomokiyo, who researches new ways in which the technology would link school children to museums and landscapes the world over. “You think of panorama’s outdoors, but you can create fantastic images indoors.”The project stems from a similar project developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for the Mars Exploration Rovers. At NASA, Randy Sargent and Illah Nourbakhsh created an early version of the camera to replicate the exploration of a foreign world. Sargent, now a project scientist at CMU West, and Nourbakhsh, an associate professor at CMU, took Gigapan to its current state through CMU’s Global Connection, a joint venture between the school, NASA, Google and National Geographic.The robotic Gigapan, manufactured by Charmed Labs in Texas, is simple to operate. Tomokiyo demonstrated a unit fresh out of the box on its way to a beta tester. “Just about any digital camera will easily fix to the rotating device,” Tomokiyo stated, noting the extensive testing performed on a variety of cameras. “It really wasn’t designed for fancy cameras,” Tomokiyo said. “It was designed for anyone with a home camera. The idea was that people could get any camera that fit in [the Gigapan] to work … and as cameras improve the panoramas will improve.”Once installed, a robotic finger rests above the shutter release; though Tomokiyo revealed a previous model utilized an infrared trigger to snap the images. The photographer next chooses an area to capture, indicates the degrees by which the Gigapan would move, then the Gigapan calculates the amount of photos required to capture the space. Once completed, the photographer downloads the images onto their computer where a stitching program, an aspect of the project where Sargent focuses his energies, arranges the individual photos to create the panorama. Next, the photographer simply uploads it to the Gigapan community Web site, created by Pittsburgh’s Deeplocal to share with panorama and Gigapan enthusiasts and spark discussions on the work. “It’s been quite amazing,” Tomokiyo said. “I believe we hit a thousand uploads in November and 2,000 this month. About half have Gigapans … and the rest are taking [panoramas] manually.” As well, some Gigapan images are added as layers on Google Earth. “The panorama is just the beginning … a lot of what we’re doing here at CMU is exploring where we can go with this.” Tomokiyo further elaborated that Global Connections distributed the devices to scientists in hopes of connecting the work, for example, between a field geologist to one in a university setting, enabling discussions via Gigapan.org. She stated that a scientist might not be a professional photographer, “but has something to share with the world.” Norway’s John Myrstad, Tomokiyo said, creates panoramas ranging from melting glaciers to Art Noveau architecture.“People are constantly coming up with new applications and things they want to do with Gigapans. Our interest is in the educational applications,” said Tomokiyo. Noting a planned exhibit at The Andy Warhol Museum, she added, “And we work with artists to turn this into an art form.” Tomokiyo’s Gigapan projects include a partnership with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). She said the initiative would connect children like pen pals from different parts of the world, educating each other on their neighborhoods and cultures. “Instead of pencil and paper, we’re using images and social networking applications.”Another project, with collaboration from The Pennsylvania Tourism Office and the National Civil War Museum follows the Civil War trail and tracks the role of Pennsylvania in the war. The project will become a layer on Google Earth, where educators and students would be able to follow the trail and view panoramas of battle sites, while zooming into view monuments and read otherwise unintelligible inscriptions. Tomokiyo said in a CMU news release for the initiative, “The battlefield is such an enormous space that even people who have visited it numerous times keep finding new things.”During the summer and fall of 2007, Tomokiyo brought Gigapans to interact with at risk youth in the Braddock and Lawrenceville boroughs of Pittsburgh. “We had a group of kids taking pictures of their neighborhood and becoming fluent in this technology,” she said, noting that the project was part of CMU’s Robot 250 program, in honor of Pittsburgh’s 250th anniversary. “Really, what we’re trying to do is build a consensus of people in Pittsburgh who are not just users [of robotics, but understand] how you can use it to tell your story and how you can use that to make an impact on your world.”