ILX-LR1 imaging product

The ILX-LR1 from Sony is a remotely controlled industrial camera with a 61 MP 35 mm full-frame back-illuminated Exmor R CMOS sensor and interchangeable E-mount lenses. It is derived from a mirrorless camera but is built as a bare body without monitor, viewfinder or battery, so that it can be installed in unmanned aircraft payloads, robots and other automated systems.

The sensor delivers about 61 MP stills, and the BIONZ XR image processing engine handles the data. Continuous shooting at 3 frames per second suits mapping flights where an image is triggered at fixed distance intervals. Because the mount accepts E-mount lenses, an integrator can choose focal length and aperture to match the required ground sampling distance. A drone integrator reports, with a 24 mm f/2.8 lens, a ground sampling distance of 1.57 cm per pixel at 100 m above ground and 1.88 cm per pixel at 120 m, from an image size of 9504 x 6336 pixels on a sensor of 35.7 x 23.8 mm. Video up to UHD 4K is available over HDMI and internally.

The body weighs 243 g and measures about 100 x 74 x 42.5 mm, small enough for a compact gimbal or fixed mount on a mid-size platform. Mounting points are provided on all six sides, together with a 1/4-20 UNC thread on the bottom. The camera runs from a DC supply of 10 V to 18 V, so it can be powered from the aircraft battery through a regulator.

Control and data connections include a locking USB Type-C port, a Micro HDMI (Type D) port, a power and control terminal block, an SD card slot and two-channel audio recording. The Camera Remote SDK allows custom software to read and change settings, and the terminal supports trigger-signal shooting with low latency, so a flight computer can fire the shutter at waypoints.

Typical applications are aerial inspection, investigation, surveying and photogrammetric mapping from UAVs, as well as use in industrial machines, robots and submersibles.