Transform Cellphones Into a CCTV Swarm 106
holy_calamity writes "Swiss researchers have developed java software that has bluetooth-capable camera phones form a distributed camera network. Each phone shares information on visual events with its neighbours and can work out the spatial position of phones around it (pdf). The software will become open source sometime next year, and the creators say it could be used to make a quick and dirty surveillance system. 'The phones currently use the average speed people walk to guess the distances between themselves, based on how long people take to move from one phone's view to another's. In testing, the system determined the distances between each phone with about 95% accuracy. They were placed 4 metres apart, making it accurate to about 20 centimetres. In future, recording the speed at which objects pass by would make more accurate judgments possible.'"
Open source surveillance (Score:2, Interesting)
F&TF3: Tokyo Drift (Score:4, Interesting)
Where all the kids are viewing/filming the race down the mountain as it goes by?
I thought that technology (well, that CGI) was rediculous but maybe it's not that far away?
(NOTE: Give me Karma, I admitted to watching that movie, that's gotta count for something).
concert-recording on the cheap (Score:5, Interesting)
We're all carrying these great little computers: we should start doing networked or collaborative stuff with them.
Re:Open source surveillance (Score:4, Interesting)
Think of a peaceful protest group using, an admittedly far superior, form of this to camera swarm the police. The perpetrator of any action, a policeman clubbing an innocent citizen for instance, might question their actions if they knew they were surrounded by this swarm.
Re:concert-recording on the cheap (Score:4, Interesting)