SenseCam

This is an interesting development in photography - and data collection in general - taking images passively. It is a project of Microsoft Research, the research arm of the industry giants dealing with research in software engineering and computer science.

According to Microsoft, on its SenseCam website,

"SenseCam is a wearable digital camera that is designed to take photographs passively, without user intervention, while it is being worn...

Unlike a regular digital camera or a cameraphone, SenseCam does not have a viewfinder or a display that can be used to frame photos. Instead, it is fitted with a wide-angle (fish-eye) lens that maximizes its field-of-view. This ensures that nearly everything in view of the wearer is captured by the camera, which is important because a regular wearable camera would likely produce many uninteresting images. SenseCam also contains a number of different electronic sensors."

The camera itself adopts a nondescript, unassuming design, and perhaps rightly so. Its merits lie in its intrinsic concepts and technology, which allows images to be taken, through a fish-eye lens, with changes in body temperature, ambient lighting and other variables. Images can also be taken on a regular timed basis.

"SenseCam takes pictures at VGA (640 x 480) resolution... the time-lapse first-person-viewpoint sequences represent a useful media type that exists somewhere between still images and video... SenseCam also stores a log file, which records other sensor data along with their timestamps. Additional user data, such as time-stamped GPS traces, may be used in conjunction with the SenseCam data via time-correlation.

Once imported to a PC, files can be stored and manipulated in a simple image viewer application that we have developed. The basis of this viewer, which is designed to be very straightforward to use, is a window in which images are displayed, and a simple VCR-type control which allows an image sequence to be played slowly (around 2 images/second), quickly (around 10 images/second), re-wound and paused. The fast-play option creates a kind of ‘flip-book’ movie effect – the entire event represented by he images is replayed as a time-compressed movie...

An additional option is provided to correct for the ‘fish-eye’ lens effect using an algorithm which applies an inverse model of the distortion."

Read more about it here.

My thoughts on it are that it can certainly be a useful tool for the Remapping LA project, insofar as the data collection and information mapping stages are concerned. The "spartan" nature of the camera, and its small size, makes it convenient to wear.

Taking this one step further would be to incorporate the camera into a device which allows images to be taken from the viewpoint of the eye, rather than from the level of the chest (if slung around the neck), or hip (if attached to a belt loop). A simple non-obtrusive device can be fashioned to be either hung around the ears, or a more fashionable contraption can be designed, perhaps similar to Oakley/Motorola's bluetooth phone/MP3 player-cum-shades:


I'd be very much interested to design such a contraption, which would add another dimension (and scale) to the architectural/urban design component of Remapping LA. The implementation of an eye-level camera would, as mentioned above, enhance the level of realism for the visual information that is collected.

Kudos to Fabian for the link; images are from Microsoft, except the last image which is 'borrowed' from CNet.