Canon Patent Application: Drone Camera Assembly

In this patent application, Canon seems to be reaching new areas of photography, as they are applying for a patent on a pan/tilt assembly for a drone or any moving vehicle.

Obviously, this isn't new technology as pan tilt assemblies for drones have existed for a long time, and even the cheapest drone usually offers some form of tilt mechanism.  Canon is attempting to create a mechanism that can be made miniaturized as much as possible and still provide the necessary movement.

In particular, in order to finely control the rotation in the tilt direction, it is necessary to greatly reduce the rotation of the motor, so that a plurality of pulleys and timing belts are required, and the tilt drive mechanism becomes large. As a result, the image pickup device consisting of the camera and the rotation drive mechanism also becomes large, and the degree of freedom of mounting on the handlebar of the drone or bicycle may be reduced, and in particular, the weight of the image pickup device may exceed the maximum load capacity in the drone. ..
An object of the present invention is to provide an electronic device, an image pickup device, and a mobile body that can be miniaturized.

The idea is to get it much more compact than the atypical mounting hardware used for drones.

The embodiments and examples detail a lot of engineering that Canon has already performed at the time of applying for this patent, making me wonder if they have something in the works.

Japan Patent Application  2022-046746