Peering through binoculars can make an impossibly faraway object look close enough to touch, but with a trade-off: Any little jostle can knock a view out of frame. Most consumer binoculars have a built-in image-stabilization system that uses an accelerometer, a processor, and a small motor to compensate for user movements. But that system only offsets slight jolts, and the processing time required creates a several-millisecond lag. Fraser Optics, a Pennsylvania company that has been supplying binoculars to the military for more than 30 years, has adapted its gyroscope-based mechanical stabilization system into the Mariner, a pair of consumer binoculars that cancels vertical movements of up to 50 degrees without any delay.
via Popular Science
Image: Brian Klutch
