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3-D Surveillance Technology
scubacuda writes "According to this Technology Review article, a new surveillance technology called Video Flashlight melds 3-D models from background scenes. This "tweening process" allows security persononnel to fly around a subject such as a pedestrian, getting a detailed look without jumping between widely separated views."
That's just flat out cool.
You "DO" see all of someone. As the article says, this technology just uses hundreds of cameras, and merges their information in realtime. Of course the criminal might notice the couple hundred cameras as he walks down the street .... but at least you'll have a 3D view of him as he steals one of them.
Hmmm...Probably not. This technique has been around for a while, but not really practical or smooth except with recent technologies. The Matrix trick was very unsophistocated in terms of electronics. Its just a few hundred cameras that are synched and can be switched from in a linear method giving the illusion of 1 single camera.
Several years ago, there was a product released on the Mac (and then simply disappearing) called Canomera. It took 2 camera positions and after you filled in a few details such as corners of buildings and all that stuff, it could interpolate between the 2 (or more) picts and allow this same sort of trick. If one had static cameras with these corner positions prelocated, it would be dead simple to create a realtime fly through with the same software base.
clif
First, a sensible editorial from the Vancouver Sun.
Second, some words from the Canadian privacy commissioner, in which he comes down on video surveillance.
Third, the cameras are ruled illegal.
Canada has a privacy commissioner who is independent of the government and police and who has one overriding concern above all else: ensuring that the constitutional privacy rights of the Canadian public are respected.
In the past, he's also prevented the government from creating a super database that merges all information from all sources -- police, medical, political, taxation, etc -- into one system. So ruled because it would make it far too easy for the various branches of government to look at data they shouldn't have access to.
Thank goodness Canada's got the foresight and commonsense to have an independent commissioner!
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Tweening is just a specific type of interpolation (in graphics, anyway).
It involings interpolation of vector coordinates, like morphing is interpolcation of bitmaps.
"Faith is the last resort of a desperate man" - Me
The Sarnoff corporation has more information available on their homepage, including a downloadable video clip of the the flashlight in action; available here.