Apple Watch straps may come with panoramic or 3D cameras

         You can't bend a lens without destroying its optical properties. But you can have a series of camera lenses on a flexible surface, and by bending that housing, you get a combined panoramic, or 3D image. Apple is working on how to use multiple cameras in a flexible housing for devices like the Apple Watch band to eliminate lens distortion.

　　"Camera system for flexible electronic devices" is a newly disclosed Apple patent application that involves taking images with such a series of lenses and then compositing them into a final image. Apple said in the patent that in order to capture wide-angle photos, some mobile phones support panoramic image capture mode. Capturing panoramic images in this way can be a challenge. The image may become blurred due to camera movement. Parts of the scene may move during the image capture operation. There may also be alignment problems, causing the desired part of the image to be inadvertently cut off.

　　Apple's solution is not to take a series of images over time, but to use a series of lenses to take all the photos at once. By bending the housing to adjust the direction of the camera, the camera can be used to take panoramic images or three-dimensional images. Among them, the most critical is the housing, which is the material that fixes and adjusts the camera. The electronic device can have a flexible housing formed of flexible fabric, flexible polymer or other flexible material, and the camera can be mounted on the housing. The housing can be bent into different configurations.

　　The bulk of the patent application is about describing how a camera can be mounted on top of such a flexible surface, or embedded in it. There is also a third option, where one or more portions of the housing wall are transparent, thereby allowing light to pass through to the lens. In addition to the specific use of camera lenses, the patent also indicates that various sensors can be used in such a flexible housing, which can include force sensors, audio sensors such as microphones, touch and/or proximity sensors such as capacitive sensors, and more.

　　Regarding the alignment or blur issues of current panoramic photos, Apple stated in the patent that during the image capture operation, the control circuit can use each camera to capture these images at the same time, stitch them together in real time to form a static or moving panoramic image. When images are captured simultaneously in this way, artifacts due to object movement may be reduced or eliminated.