Koala Brings Affordable, Simple, Practical AR Camera Tracking

FOR-A is bringing to market Koala, a completely innovative approach to camera tracking. The device, designed and built by FOR-A Europe and available in Europe, makes high quality live augmented reality production a practical proposition for broadcast, corporate and events applications.

Successful augmented reality and live virtual studio applications depend on knowing exactly what the camera is “seeing”, so that the computer generated elements are aligned and will move as the camera moves. In the past this has been accomplished either mechanically – which needs a dedicated head – or optically, which requires targets on the walls or ceiling plus a spotter camera mounted alongside the production camera. In either case, the system needs extensive alignment before shooting can start.

Koala eliminates these constraints. The compact unit clips onto any camera – like a koala hugs a tree – and is instantly delivering orientation data. That means no delays for calibration, and users are free to pick the camera and pan and tilt head that suits their production needs. For rental companies, there is no need to hold stock of expensive specialist equipment that may have low utilisation.

The standard Koala generates high-precision pan and tilt information, along with zoom and focus settings from digital lenses or through external encoders. The primary application will be for cameras on tripods, but with additional option it can also generate XYZ positional information when used on a crane.

The unit is completely self-contained, and even delivers the tracking data – in the industry-standard FreeD protocol – over Wifi. It can also be connected to the graphics engine over ethernet or serial port, so no special cables are needed.

Koala will be introduced at IBC 2023.

You might also like...

Sports Graphics Production: Data Sources For Live Sports Graphics

The first step in data driven sports graphics production is gathering the data itself. The nature of that data can vary dramatically from sport to sport. Here we discuss some of the data gathering technology and techniques required.

Growing Momentum For 5G In Remote Production

A combination of factors that includes new 3GPP 5G standards & optimizations that have reduced latencies & jitter, new network slicing capabilities and the availability of new LEO satellite services are bringing increasing momentum to the use of 5G for…

Monitoring & Compliance In Broadcast: Accessibility & The Impact Of AI

The proliferation of delivery devices and formats increases the challenges presented by accessibility compliance, but it is an area of rapid AI powered innovation.

Sports Graphics Production: Part 1 – Data Driven Visualization

Welcome to Part 1 of our new series on Sports Graphics Production - a collection of six articles presented in two parts, that examine two key areas of live sports broadcast; data driven visualizations and the rise of virtual studio environments.

Monitoring & Compliance In Broadcast: Monitoring QoS & QoE To Power Monetization

Measuring Quality of Experience (QoE) as perceived by viewers has become critical for monetization both from targeted advertising and direct content consumption.