Hardware

Overhead Camera

An overhead camera is a camera mounted above the workspace looking down, providing a stable global view of the scene in manipulation setups. Overhead views simplify calibration to a work surface and offer largely occlusion-free observation of object layout, and they are commonly paired with wrist-mounted cameras that supply close-range detail during grasping. Many imitation learning rigs and benchmarks standardize on this combination.

Why it matters for physical AI

Camera placement is a quiet but decisive design variable in policy learning; overhead-plus-wrist configurations dominate manipulation data collection because they balance scene context and precision.