Canon Patent Application: Canon 360 degree camera

Canon continues it's research into 360 cameras, making this a flurry of patent applications we've seen for the particular technology.

This particular patent application includes the ability to detect the protruding tripod legs and effectively remove from the resultant image.

Awkwardly the patent describes this as;

The camera which can image at once the omnidirection (entire celestial sphere) imaging which added not only the omnidirection that can be set horizontally but the direction of the zenith and the direction of a ground surface with one camera is also proposed. However, in the camera which performs omnidirection imaging, the component projected from cameras, such as a tripod which supports the camera, is reflected in an image. In such a case, the imperfect omnidirection image except the region containing a protrusion member was acquired first conventionally, and the perfect omnidirection image had been acquired by sticking the image of the region concerned imaged so that a protrusion member might not independently be included on the imperfect omnidirection image acquired previously. 

This patent like the others is rather mechanically detailed for the camera portion of the system, making it likely that it's further along in its research and is more than just for academic reasons.

Japan Patent Application 2018-173627