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Agent OS
AOS-HW-012 Normative foundation

Camera Hardware Options and Quality Path

Camera Hardware Options and Quality Path: scope, decisions, requirements, evidence, risks, and traceability for the Agent OS programme.

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Camera Hardware Options and Quality Path

This specification treats hardware support as an evidence programme with explicit documentation rights, recovery paths, quality gates, and replacement strategies.

Table of Contents

Purpose and Scope

Area: Hardware Programme.

This specification treats hardware support as an evidence programme with explicit documentation rights, recovery paths, quality gates, and replacement strategies.

This document owns the semantics implied by Camera Hardware Options and Quality Path. It does not assert that every described subsystem already exists. It defines the target model, constraints, evidence needed to trust an implementation, and the boundary with adjacent documents.

Normative Position

  1. Treat camera as sensor mode control, capture, calibration, ISP, 3A, metadata, temporal pipeline, computational photography, encoding, latency, power, and quality assurance.
  2. Build a portable camera service and multiple backends: UVC/reference, documented ISP, and Pixel evidence adapter.
  3. Store tuning and calibration as versioned, device-specific assets with provenance.

Operating Model

The operating model is contract-first and evidence-driven. A component declares its authority, resources, lifecycle, error model, cancellation and timeout behavior, observability, version, and compatibility promise. Backends are replaceable only when the same conformance suite passes and no forbidden platform type leaks into portable layers.

Implementation proceeds through a reference model or mock, deterministic QEMU evidence where relevant, documentation-first physical hardware, and quality-hardware evidence. Pixel 9 adapters remain quarantined according to ADR-0004.

Requirements

  • R01. Treat camera as sensor mode control, capture, calibration, ISP, 3A, metadata, temporal pipeline, computational photography, encoding, latency, power, and quality assurance.
  • R02. Build a portable camera service and multiple backends: UVC/reference, documented ISP, and Pixel evidence adapter.
  • R03. Store tuning and calibration as versioned, device-specific assets with provenance.
  • R04. Specify normal, partial, denied, timeout, cancellation, restart, upgrade, and permanent-failure behavior.
  • R05. Expose structured diagnostics without leaking secrets or vendor-specific implementation details.
  • R06. Link material unknowns to a claim and, when testable, an experiment with an owner and gate.
  • R07. Update affected documentation and task data when evidence changes the model.

Failure and Degradation

Degradation must be explicit rather than accidental. The system reports capability absence, reduced quality, unavailable provider, stale data, or unsafe condition through typed states. It must not silently fall back to broader authority, unrestricted legacy execution, unverified firmware, lossy data migration, or irreversible agent action.

Recovery defines what state is retained, reconstructed, re-enrolled, compensated, or intentionally discarded. Unsupported hardware or providers are rejected at binding time where possible.

Evidence and Acceptance

  • Controlled scene corpus with RAW and processed outputs.
  • Objective metrics plus blinded expert review.
  • Latency, thermal, video, stabilization, autofocus, exposure and low-light tests.
  • Evidence records target identity, hardware revision, firmware, source commit, toolchain, configuration, seed, timestamps, artifacts, expected result, actual result, and reviewer.
  • Acceptance requires the referenced tasks to meet their own criteria; prose completion is not implementation completion.

Implementation Obligations

Task Obligation Priority Gate/Milestone Verification
AOS-OPEN-091 Produce the NXP i.MX 8M Plus target and camera dossier P1 M1 Run the relevant document, schema, conformance, build, experiment, or hardware checks; independently review boundary compliance and acceptance criteria.
AOS-CAM-090 Build a lawful Pixel-class camera quality oracle corpus P0 M1 Run the relevant document, schema, conformance, build, experiment, or hardware checks; independently review boundary compliance and acceptance criteria.
AOS-CAM-091 Bring up a documented i.MX 8M Plus RAW and metadata bench P0 M5 Run the relevant document, schema, conformance, build, experiment, or hardware checks; independently review boundary compliance and acceptance criteria.
AOS-CAM-092 Specify portable 3A, calibration, and capture-result contracts P0 M2 Run the relevant document, schema, conformance, build, experiment, or hardware checks; independently review boundary compliance and acceptance criteria.
AOS-CAM-093 Establish a calibrated camera quality measurement laboratory P1 M5 Run the relevant document, schema, conformance, build, experiment, or hardware checks; independently review boundary compliance and acceptance criteria.
AOS-CAM-094 Evaluate industrial and UVC camera modules as compromise reducers P1 M5 Run the relevant document, schema, conformance, build, experiment, or hardware checks; independently review boundary compliance and acceptance criteria.
AOS-P9-094 Test Pixel 9 camera control and quality replacement feasibility P0 M7 Run the relevant document, schema, conformance, build, experiment, or hardware checks; independently review boundary compliance and acceptance criteria.

Risks and Open Questions

  • A published algorithm is not a production camera stack.
  • Sensor/ISP documentation and calibration access may be contract-restricted.
  • Image quality can regress while functional tests still pass.
  • Open-question rule: an unanswered high-impact question becomes a claim/experiment record and cannot be hidden in meeting notes.
  • Stop rule: work stops or changes track when legal rights, recovery, debug access, safety, or the required evidence path is unavailable.

Related Documents

Planning Reference Anchors

Portable Pipeline

AOS-CAM-092 — Specify portable 3A, calibration, and capture-result contracts

Quality Model

AOS-CAM-093 — Establish a calibrated camera quality measurement laboratory

Tracks

AOS-OPEN-091 — Produce the NXP i.MX 8M Plus target and camera dossier; AOS-CAM-090 — Build a lawful Pixel-class camera quality oracle corpus; AOS-CAM-091 — Bring up a documented i.MX 8M Plus RAW and metadata bench; AOS-CAM-094 — Evaluate industrial and UVC camera modules as compromise reducers; AOS-P9-094 — Test Pixel 9 camera control and quality replacement feasibility