The Next Step - Wearable Camera / Always On

bmattock

bmattock

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Just for fun...news story attached.

I still want the wetware/software interface so my eyes become the lenses, my brain the storage media. A USB cable in the back of my head, and I'd be ready to go.

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

http://www.computeractive.co.uk/personal-computer-world/news/2153937/wearable-camera-captures-life

Wearable camera captures your life
Non-stop photography means you never miss a shot - and police version may be used in evidence

Clive Akass, Personal Computer World 12 Apr 2006
Researchers have developed a wearable camera that ensures you never need miss a good photo-opportunity – because it takes pictures all the time.

The prototype at HP’s Bristol Labs consists simply of a sensor module taped to a pair of sunglasses and connected to a belt pack containing a battery, processor and 40GB of storage.

It takes 1.5megapixel stills at a rate of 15 every two seconds and simultaneously captures a 0.3megapixel video at 30 frames per second.

The belt unit can store only about three hours of images so it is not switched on all the time. When the user presses a button on the belt pack the device saves the last 20 seconds of pictures, which are held in a rolling buffer, and all those taken during the next five minutes.

Phil Cheadle, who heads the ‘casual capture’ project, cheerfully admits that much of what it taken is complete rubbish. The picture tends to jerk about as we do not usually move our heads in the gentle pans beloved of cinematographers.

Cheadle and his team have developed software that makes use of this by inferring head movements from successive frames and using them in algorithms that automatically edits the film into good frames.

The work is targeted at people for whom even point-and-shoot cameras are too much hassle. ‘If you take a couple of two-year-olds out you can’t take your eyes off them for two seconds. You don’t have time to take a photograph and even if you do it is incredibly difficult to take one at eactly the right moment.’

Intel has pointed out that storage is becoming so cheap and capacious that it would be perfectly feasible to capture and store your entire life in video.

But Cheadle asks: ‘What is the point? It is very easy to capture the data. The problem is to find the bits in it that are interesting. The more you have, the more difficult it is.’

But he said he has had inquiries about the feasibility of policemen using a similar system to capture information that could be used in evidence.
Click to expand...
 
Saw this on the news a couple of weeks ago. It is already being trialled by several police forces. Seems it is most useful in countering accusations of excessive force being used during raids and arrests.
 
It seems this kind of technology is challenging long-held notions of privacy. On the other hand, the democratization of information tends to make all of us behave within the norms or our particular society. We should still expect privacy within our homes, and these devices won't change that. Terrorists have always been able to take advantage of our openness to study our public weaknesses. These devices also won't change that.

"We know now that as human beings busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water." Orson Welles, The War of the Worlds. 1938
 
I don't think there is a privacy problem here... unless we are each to be allocated a copper to follow us every minute of the day.


[Pedantic mode on]Ps. Vince, the quote is more correctly atributed to H G Wells, as the opening lines of his book, on which the Orson Wells play was based. 😉 [/Pedantic mode off]
 
There's a guy where I work that has been researching this "wearable computer" stuff for over 5 years now. When I see him in the halls, I quickly divert to another hallway. Talk about another piece of "nerd equipment"... his short sleeve shirt, too-short tie, calculator-in-the-holster, and pencil protector isn't enough, he also needs to wear a belt (complete with suspenders) with a processor, camera, and wireless router!. What's worse... this stuff sees, hears, and can probably even read minds!
 
bmattock said:
I still want the wetware/software interface so my eyes become the lenses, my brain the storage media. A USB cable in the back of my head, and I'd be ready to go.
Click to expand...

You have that interface already... your memories. Forget about the USB-in-the-head, your mouth and fingers make a very efficient output device.
 
BrianShaw said:
There's a guy where I work that has been researching this "wearable computer" stuff for over 5 years now. When I see him in the halls, I quickly divert to another hallway. Talk about another piece of "nerd equipment"... his short sleeve shirt, too-short tie, calculator-in-the-holster, and pencil protector isn't enough, he also needs to wear a belt (complete with suspenders) with a processor, camera, and wireless router!. What's worse... this stuff sees, hears, and can probably even read minds!
Click to expand...


How does it read a two pound magnet from the back of a TV tube? 😀 😉
 
A more plausible thing to do is to take a tiny P&S digicam with you everyday and shot like 30-60 pics a day, and assemble all the pictures you have from a year into a video, and do that for years and years... you'll end up with a movie of those years of your life.
 
Almost all computers nowadays have firewire standard... Macs of today have native support for windows, so there's not really a line anymore separating the two. My next PC will be a Mac
 
bmattock said:
Just for fun...news story attached.

I still want the wetware/software interface so my eyes become the lenses, my brain the storage media. A USB cable in the back of my head, and I'd be ready to go.

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

http://www.computeractive.co.uk/personal-computer-world/news/2153937/wearable-camera-captures-life
Click to expand...

I thought we already have this device called RFF password. All we have to do is to log on the site and talk about photography with the images in our heads. Once in a while we exercise shutters of our expensive equipment. We can talk about the things we do or we don't do. We can share the experience we have or we don't have. People will believe. I think this place is classic hall of that exhibit. No?
 
ywenz said:
A more plausible thing to do is to take a tiny P&S digicam with you everyday and shot like 30-60 pics a day, and assemble all the pictures you have from a year into a video, and do that for years and years... you'll end up with a movie of those years of your life.
Click to expand...

I drink beer because I don't want a record of those years of my life.
 
Fedzilla_Bob said:
LOL- I know. I have an AMD 64 box at home, built it with firewire in mind. You can have Linux and firewire too!
Click to expand...

I love Linux. My wife has WinXP on her PC, but I've got half a dozen servers and several laptops in my wireless (G) house that run only Linux. And Linux runs my house, as well. And my security system. Doesn't walk the dogs yet, but I'm working on it.

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks
 
Silva Lining said:
If you videoed your entire life, when would you get the chance to watch it?

(Probably after I've finished opening my full-size map of the United States)
Click to expand...

It's a small world, but I'd hate to have to paint it.

Thank you, Steven Wright!

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks
 
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