Robotic Panorama Capture - The Devils in the Details
A 12 megapixel camera can be used to collect a realistic 360 degree panorama by taking 5 rows of 15 images in sequence. That's 75 images in all. It's also 75 times you need to snap the camera, and 74 times you need to realign the camera. What if you wanted to double the rows and/or columns in the panorama? What if the size of the panorama generated were so large that you could not read it into memory and stitch it in one shot?
As you get more ambitious, the panorama capture and process becomes more
tedious. To get around this, you need a robotic capture system.
There are several complete commercial systems out there, though many of them have
significant limitations with respect to the weight they can manage, and for the cameras they
support. There is no surprise here, but when it comes down to it,
the best bang for your buck is building your own robotic mount
yourself!
It turns out that there is a reasonably priced motorized tripod mount called the Orion Teletrack(Merlin in Europe) that a few smart people (Frédéric Mantegazza and Claude Vanhemmens to name two) have figured how to convert into a motorized panorama collection systems. Frédéric Mantegazza even wrote software called PapyWizard which guides the Orion through the collection process.