Wearable Camera Records Your Day
Posted on July 13, 2005
Microsoft has a project called SenseCam, which is a wearable camera that takes 2,000 photographs a day of the wearer's surroundings so that they can be examined later. As the project's website suggests this could be useful for finding a misplaced object or observing an accident. The SenseCam would be a useful product, but you want to be careful to avoid heading towards a Final Cut type of scenario.
SenseCam is a badge-sized wearable camera that captures up to 2000 VGA images per day into 128Mbyte FLASH memory. In addition, sensor data such as movement, light level and temperature is recorded every second. This is similar to an aircraft Black Box accident recorder but miniaturised for the human body. It could help with memory recall, e.g. where did I leave my spectacles or keys? who did I meet last week? by doing a rewind of the days events. If a person has an accident, the events and images leading up to this will be recorded, and these could be useful to medical staff. It could also be used for automatic diary generation.Sensors trigger a new recording. For example, each time the person walks into a new room, this light change transition is detected and the room image is captured with an ultra wide angle or fish-eye lens. Other triggers include, time, sudden movement, or a person nearby. A hand gesture can also manually capture an image. An accelerometer is used for image stabilisation to reduce blurred images caused by camera motion. This is an essential feature of any truly wearable camera.
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