Ratchet Up tag:typepad.com,2003:weblog-21782010-09-06T06:12:55-05:00TypePad3D Image of Little Girl: Heads Up Drivers!tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54edfb6648833013486fea598970c2010-09-06T06:12:55-05:002010-09-06T06:21:35-05:00... 3D image is being used on the streets of West Vancouver in an attempt to jolt reckless drivers into reality. [...] The girl will be an optical illusion, but the scenario is very real, according to David Dunne of the BCAA Traffic Safety Foundation. [...] Canada’s first ever 3D image aimed at driver safety.[...] The image is meant to provide a surprising physical reminder that drivers need to have an attitude of safety and caution. [...] The city has also planned some safety parameters around the 3D image, which adds another potential distraction for drivers. [...] “As a driver, pay attention and drive like a ball, or a car pulling out of a side street, or a child could run out on the road at any given time.” [Source]John SchottCompressed Sensingtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54edfb664883301310f4c4d3e970c2010-03-01T05:11:44-06:002010-03-01T05:17:08-06:00Compressed sensing works something like this: You’ve got a picture — of a kidney, of the president, doesn’t matter. The picture is made of 1 million pixels. In traditional imaging, that’s a million measurements you have to make. In compressed sensing, you measure only a small fraction — say, 100,000 pixels randomly selected from various parts of the image. From that starting point there is a gigantic, effectively infinite number of ways the remaining 900,000 pixels could be filled in.The key to finding the single correct representation is a notion called sparsity, a mathematical way of describing an image’s complexity, or lack thereof. A picture made up of a few simple, understandable elements — like solid blocks of color or wiggly lines — is sparse; a screenful of random, chaotic dots is not. It turns out that out of all the bazillion possible reconstructions, the simplest, or sparsest, image is almost always the right one or very close to it. But how can you do all the number crunching that is required to find the sparsest image quickly? [...] To do that, the algorithm takes the incomplete image and starts trying to fill in the blank spaces with large blocks...John SchottAds That Change As You Watchtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54edfb66488330128764ff14b970c2009-12-13T19:50:09-06:002009-12-13T19:51:04-06:00It happens when nobody is watching." As the tagline on a poster raising awareness about domestic violence, that's not bad. But it was the poster itself that was truly attention-grabbing — for it brought the issue of being watched (or not) to life. The poster, placed in a bus shelter in Berlin, was a one-time installation sponsored by Amnesty International. When a person in the shelter was looking at the poster, he saw, along with the words, a photograph of an amiable couple: a stocky, professional-looking man in a blue oxford-cloth shirt, his arm around the shoulders of his girlfriend or wife. If no one in the shelter was paying attention to the poster, though, the image switched: now the man was raising his fist against the woman as she leaned away and protected her face. (There was a slight lag in the switch, so viewers could notice that the poster was changing its image.) Designed by the Hamburg-based firm Jung von Matt (which bills itself as being in the business of "attention warfare"), the ad worked via a camera attached to a computer outfitted with face-tracking software with a working range of about 16 feet. A Potsdam company called...John SchottGoogle Image Swirltag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54edfb66488330120a7022283970b2009-12-02T20:06:34-06:002009-12-02T20:06:34-06:00Google Image Swirl organizes image search results into groups and sub-groups, based on their visual and semantic similarity and presents them in an intuitive exploratory interface. There's this branch in computer science and statistics for vision research. Normally, if you ever hear about it in the news it's in the context of spotting terrorists in security tapes or facial recognition checkpoints (you know, like what they have in movies in front of giant steel doors). That is of course not the only application. Google (and many others) has been playing around with this stuff for a while. Most recently, they released Google Image Swirl in their labs section, which utilizes computer vision to find similar images." [Flowing Data]John SchottHigh-Voltage Photograms: Robert Bueltemantag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00e54edfb66488330115718ecb15970b2009-06-30T05:31:14-05:002009-06-30T05:31:14-05:00Buelteman's technique is an elaborate extension of Kirlian photography (a high-voltage photogram process popular in the late 1930s) and is considered so dangerous and laborious that no one else will attempt it—even if they could get through all the steps. Buelteman begins by painstakingly whittling down flowers, leaves, sprigs, and twigs with a scalpel until they're translucent. He then lays each specimen on color transparency film and, for a more detailed effect, covers it with a diffusion screen. This assemblage is placed on his "easel"—a piece of sheet metal sandwiched between Plexiglas, floating in liquid silicone. Buelteman hits everything with an electric pulse and the electrons do a dance as they leap from the sheet metal, through the silicone and the plant (and hopefully not through him), while heading back out the jumper cables. In that moment, the gas surrounding the subject is ionized, leaving behind ethereal coronas. He then hand-paints the result with white light shining through an optical fiber the width of a human hair, a process so tricky each image can take up to 150 attempts. Because there's no lens to distort the colors, Buelteman's work replicates natural hues far better than traditional photographs. "I'm calling into...John SchottMovies at 1000 FPStag:typepad.com,2003:post-682754352009-06-19T05:23:49-05:002009-06-19T05:23:49-05:00From iMovix, the SprintCam V3 HD is the only HD native fully integrated ultra slow-motion system for broadcast, offering unmatched frame rates and high definition native resolution image quality. The system allows the user to capture from 500 to 1,000 frames per second and to replay them without delay ! Thus 20 to 40 times slower than usual speed, with HD native resolution image quality! I-Movix SprintCam v3 NAB 2009 showreel from David Coiffier on Vimeo. This new technology has applications in live sports and other live TV productions, but also in the production of commercials, documentaries, and movies. A full system made up of 4 parts as it is the case for the SprintCam Live V2.1 system: (1) a HD high-speed camera, (2) an operational control panel, that allows you to do all traditional color settings, and to choose the frame rate that best corresponds to your needs, (3) a slow motion remote with an new cueing system, that allows you to select a video sequence and instantly replay it with an HD-SDI output. The sequence can then be live broadcasted or stored on a EVS® LSM® server for a later use, (4) a camera control unit, the heart...John SchottSheet of Fiber Makes A Cameratag:typepad.com,2003:post-681996032009-06-17T08:14:26-05:002009-06-17T08:14:26-05:00By integrating sensors into a plastic fiber, researchers make a large, flexible camera. Textiles and the fibers that compose them are experiencing a sort of high-tech renaissance lately. Researchers are finding ways to turn silk into sensors by adding biological molecules to it, and turn cotton sheets into electronic fabric by bathing them in a solution of nanotubes. The idea is to use the electronic textiles, which are flexible and can be worn comfortably, to sense such things as the blood of a soldier or pathogens circulating in the air. Now researchers at MIT have integrated a collection of light sensors into polymer fibers, creating a new type of camera. Yoel Fink, a professor of materials sciences and engineering and the lead researcher on the project, notes that a standard camera requires lenses that are usually rigid and heavy. A camera made from fibers, however, could be lightweight, robust, and even foldable. Although Fink admits that the applications aren't yet well defined, he suggests that such a fiber-based camera could be used in a large foldable telescope or integrated into soldiers' uniforms. [...] In the researchers' most recent work, they integrate eight sensors into a polymer fiber--more than ever before....John SchottA Screen That Looks Backtag:typepad.com,2003:post-677347512009-06-06T17:37:13-05:002009-06-06T17:37:13-05:00For decades, engineers have envisioned wearable displays for pilots, surgeons, and mechanics. But so far, a compact wearable display that's easy to interact with has proved elusive. Researchers at Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems (IPMS) have now developed a screen technology that could help make wearable displays more compact and simpler to use. By interlacing photodetector cells--similar to those used to capture light in a camera--with display pixels, the researchers have built a system that can display a moving image while also detecting movement directly in front of it. Tracking a person's eye movements while she looks at the screen could allow for eye-tracking control: instead of using hand controls or another form of input, a user could flip through menu options on a screen by looking at the right part of the screen. The researchers envisage eventually integrating the screen with an augmented-reality system. [...] Eye-tracking technology is nothing new, of course. Over the years, researchers have developed a number of systems that follow a person's gaze to allow him or her to interface with a computer. Often, the applications are for physically impaired people, but they can also be designed for a general computer user. [...] The researchers...John SchottFastest Camera Yettag:typepad.com,2003:post-662785952009-05-02T09:43:45-05:002009-05-02T09:47:35-05:00Scientists have made the fastest camera ever. It can take 6.1 million pictures in a single second, at a shutter speed of 440 trillionths of a second. Light itself moves just a fraction of a centimeter in that time. The camera works by illuminating objects with a laser that emits a different infrared frequency for every single pixel, allowing them to custom-amplify a signal that would otherwise be too dim to see. [...] “We have invented a new type of imaging technology that overcomes the fundamental limitation between sensitivity and speed,” said Keisuke Goda, an optoelectronic specialist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “It’s the world’s fastest camera.” High shutter speeds enable moving objects to be clearly photographed. The less time a camera’s optical eye is open, the less time a subject has to move. But this comes at a price: less light enters the camera, causing the image to be underexposed. That’s why sports photographers use high-powered strobe lights. Workarounds include the use of extra-sensitive chemicals in traditional films, or amplification of signals captured by the photoelectronic light sensors of digital cameras. But film is relatively limited in its range, as are digital cameras. At the speed of...John SchottMedia Center In A Headsettag:typepad.com,2003:post-644620352009-03-22T06:49:02-05:002009-03-22T06:50:56-05:00A new headset from Nikon, released in Japan, is a completely self-contained entertainment center. Media-playback software and up to eight gigabytes of memory are built in, and with two AA batteries installed, the headset weighs less than a pound. According to Nikon, the adjustable eyepiece simulates a 50-inch TV screen viewed from about 10 feet away. The key to the picture quality is a light-diffraction grating that emerged from the company's research on camera lens design. Data can be loaded onto the headset through either a USB cable or a Wi-Fi connection. [Source]John SchottMy Eye Is A Cameratag:typepad.com,2003:post-640960672009-03-14T18:43:04-05:002009-03-14T18:43:04-05:00A one-eyed documentary filmmaker is preparing to work with a video camera concealed inside a prosthetic eye, hoping to secretly record people for a project commenting on the global spread of surveillance cameras. Canadian Rob Spence's eye was damaged in a childhood shooting accident and it was removed three years ago. Now, he is in the final stages of developing a camera to turn the handicap into an advantage. [...] With the camera tucked inside a prosthetic eye, he hopes to be able to record the same things he sees with his working eye, his muscles moving the camera eye just like his real one. Spence said he plans to become a "human surveillance machine" to explore privacy issues and whether people are "sleepwalking into an Orwellian society." [...] His special equipment will consist of a camera, originally designed for colonoscopies, a battery and a wireless transmitter. It's a challenge to get everything to fit inside the prosthetic eye, but Spence has had help from top engineers, including Steve Mann, who co-founded the wearable computers research group at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. [...] Spence, who jokingly calls himself "Eyeborg," told reporters at a media conference in Brussels...John SchottComparing iPhoto and Google Face Recognitiontag:typepad.com,2003:post-634146612009-02-27T05:40:31-06:002009-02-27T05:40:31-06:00Face recognition starts with face detection. The face is then rotated so that the eyes are level and scaled to a uniform size. Next, one of three different technical approaches kicks in. Each of these approaches is, of course, covered by its own set of patents and bundled into various vendor offerings. One approach transforms the face into a mathematical template that can be stored and searched; a second uses the entire face as a template and performs image matching. And a third approach attempts to create a 3-D model based on the face, and then performs some kind of geometric matching. Based on our experience with the software, we believe that Apple's system is using a landmarks approach, while the Google system is doing some kind of image matching. But we could be wrong. Neither company has publicized which algorithms it is using. [...] Overall, iPhoto does a surprisingly good job finding a bunch of photos of the person you've selected and "named." But in the process, it finds photos of other people as well. So your next task is to tell iPhoto which photos it got right and which are wrong. iPhoto uses this information to update its...John Schott180—Degree Surveillance Camtag:typepad.com,2003:post-633031792009-02-24T16:56:54-06:002009-02-27T05:42:15-06:00To cover a 180° field of view, most surveillance cameras either swivel on remote-controlled mounts, which means they can miss suspicious activity, or use fish-eye lenses, which can introduce distortions. A new camera stitches images from five inexpensive, fixed sensors--the same kind used in camera phones--into a single, undistorted 180° picture. The Ethernet-connected device is the size of a light switch and transmits video at 15 frames per second, along with a seven-megapixel still image every second or two. [Source]John SchottFlexi-cam For Home Huntingtag:typepad.com,2003:post-630523652009-02-19T06:20:29-06:002009-02-27T05:43:39-06:00Milwaukee may have designed it to help home inspectors spot hidden mold or shoddy repairs, but the M-Spector is just too much fun to leave to the pros. Did your 5-year-old really drop your diamond ring down the sink — or pawn it for Fruit Roll-Ups? Want to find out the easy way how many bananas your "hilarious" brother-in-law stuffed in your tailpipe? Grab the M-Spector, thumb the power button, and the 2.5-inch screen lights up with 320x240-pixel color video, transmitted from the tiny CMOS camera on the end of its flexible neck. A camera-mounted LED illuminates dark and dismal places, letting you see anywhere you can cram the 3-foot-long cable. Sure, cops could use the M-Spector to peer around corners or ferret out shanks in prison cells, but it's equally effective at locating the perfectly good grape that rolled under your fridge. Just don't get too creative; you'll probably want to draw the line at home colonoscopies. [Source]John SchottMy Eye Is A Cameratag:typepad.com,2003:post-602508042009-02-14T10:10:09-06:002009-02-14T10:10:09-06:00Rob Spence looks you straight in the eye when he talks. So it's a little unnerving to imagine that soon one of his hazel-green eyes will have a tiny wireless video camera in it that records your every move. The eye he's considering replacing is not a working one -- it's a prosthetic eye he's worn for several years. Spence, a 36-year-old Canadian filmmaker, is not content with having one blind eye. He wants a wireless video camera inside his prosthetic, giving him the ability to make movies wherever he is, all the time, just by looking around. "If you lose your eye and have a hole in your head, then why not stick a camera in there?" he asks. Spence, who calls himself the "eyeborg guy," will not be restoring his vision. The camera won't connect to his brain. What it will do is allow him to be a bionic man where technology fuses with the human body to become inseparable. In effect, he will become a "little brother," someone who's watching and recording every move of those in his field of vision. If successful, Spence will become one of a growing number of lifecasters. From early webcam pioneer...John Schott3D TVtag:typepad.com,2003:post-610904022009-01-09T05:34:22-06:002009-01-09T05:34:22-06:00According to industry estimates, there are already some two million television sets in homes that are ready to show 3-D video. The only problem is that there aren't a lot of 3-D broadcasts ready to roll. At this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, however, electronics and 3-D production companies are showing off the potential of 3-D content with the hope that in-home 3-D television will be mainstream within a couple of years. The experience of watching a movie in 3-D has changed significantly over the past few decades. Gone are the red and blue cardboard glasses that meld two different images together and often distort on-screen colors. Directors and cinematographers have also learned to avoid gimmicks, like a pie in the audience's face, and are trying to use the extra dimension to tell the story better. Many new televisions are already shipping with software and hardware that supports 3-D, and some early adopters are taking advantage of the technology with video games. Mitsubishi, Samsung, Panasonic, Sony, and JVC will all be showing off 3-D products at CES. Companies including RealD and Dolby have developed technology that provides the correct visual information to the left and right eye...John SchottLens Collects Broadband Satellite Signalstag:typepad.com,2003:post-605865262008-12-30T06:10:41-06:002008-12-30T06:10:41-06:00Technology Review reports on a new lens that can be mounted on, say, the top of a moving train to gather and distribute broadband signals from satellites. Internet access can make a train trip far more productive and enjoyable. But train-mounted satellite dishes that send and receive data can't be used on a lot of routes, as the standard hardware is too big to fit in some tunnels. Now researchers at the University of York, in England, have developed an alternative: a dome-shaped plastic lens that's less than half as high as a typical satellite dish. [...] With a traditional satellite system, a separate dish is required for each satellite, and the whole dish has to move to track the signal. Moving an entire dish is fine if it's mounted on a stable structure, such as the roof of a house, but not if it's affixed to the side of a train that's running through tunnels and under bridges. A lot of room is required around the device at all times, to ensure that it doesn't hit something while tracking a signal. With Thornton's device, incoming radiation bounces off the surface on which the lens is mounted. The lens concentrates...John SchottSeadragon for iPhonetag:typepad.com,2003:post-600273742008-12-15T04:42:12-06:002008-12-15T04:42:12-06:00It's now possible to see giga-pixel images on the iPhone, thanks to none other than Microsoft. In their first app for the iPhone, Microsoft is making available a version of their Seadragon technology. As their Live Labs site notes, Seadragon Mobile brings the same smooth image browsing you get on the PC to the mobile platform. Get super-close in on a map or photo, with just a few pinches or taps of your finger. Browse an entire collection of photos from a single screen. You can browse Deep Zoom Images that you can create from your own pictures or your Photosynth collection (or anybody else's). Seadragon Mobile is available for free at the iTunes App Store."Cnet notes that engineers in Microsoft's Live Labs have released the company's first application for Apple's popular smartphone--even before making it available on Microsoft's own mobile platform. Seadragon Mobile, which was added to Apple's App Store on Saturday, is a free image-browsing app that allows users to quickly "deep zoom" images while online and is intended to demonstrate what is possible with a mobile platform. Seadragon is the backbone for Microsoft's Photosynth, which allows users to take a grouping of photographs and stitch them together...John SchottItalian Mafia's Mobile Phone Guntag:typepad.com,2003:post-591889642008-11-28T07:17:46-06:002008-11-28T07:17:46-06:00The BBC reports that a gun disguised as a mobile phone has been discovered by police in Italy. The .22 calibre weapon was found during an early morning raid on a property near Naples. Officers also seized bullet proof vests, drugs, ammunition and thousands of pounds in cash. It was all part of an operation against the Camorra, the Naples-based mafia. Fully loaded, the gun's capable of firing four shots in quick succession through the antenna using buttons on the keypad as the trigger. One man was arrested by detectives but others are thought to have escaped."John SchottBattlefield Camera You Throw Like A Grenadetag:typepad.com,2003:post-586654222008-11-18T07:25:49-06:002008-11-18T07:25:49-06:00Makes sense: toss this grenade-like camera into a battlefield situation, then watch it unfold to send back a panoramic picture. Dubbed the I-Ball the wireless device is robust enough to survive being thrown onto a battlefield. The I-Ball's internal camera gives a 360 degree view, with images being sent from the instant it is launched. It is thought the new technology would enable soldiers to see into potential danger spots without putting themselves at risk of ambush. The ball can be fired from a grenade launcher - or thrown into a room - giving troops vital information of who - or what - is on the ground or around the corner. Inside the sphere are image sensors and two fish-eye lenses. The data is then sent back and remapped through a type of processor known as a Field Programmable Gate Array which compensates for spin and tumble and then displays a true 360 image in real time." [BBC]John SchottPaparazzo Envy: Longing To Be Houndedtag:typepad.com,2003:post-583356582008-11-11T02:42:46-06:002008-11-11T02:42:46-06:00For many the growth of paparazzi culture is an index of our celebrity obsession; but if you are actually among the celebrity obsessed paparazzi may actually engender a certain allure: "Wouldn't it be great to have someone follow me!" So, naturally young lads pop up volunteering to do exactly that. For a hefty fee, which, no doubt, is part of this perverse pleasure. Sonia Zjawinski reports in Wired on the pleasure of having a long lens trail her around for a day of self-financed narcissism. Dressed in jeans and a camo hoodie, her everyday blandness now signals a celebrity in disguise, caught in moments of simulated naturalness as she emerges from a Starbucks. Plus, when it's all over she gets her pictures published in Wired—ironies abound. We live in the age of the candid snapshot. People don't want to pose for glamour photos; they want artful images that look unstaged and off-the-cuff, like a party pic from TheCobrasnake.com or a tousled cover model on Vice magazine. But calculated spontaneity is hard to pull off without the help of a professional. And I wanted some pics of me that say "I look awesome even when I'm not trying." That's where Izaz...John SchottYosemite Extreme Pano Projecttag:typepad.com,2003:post-578437152008-10-31T16:00:41-05:002008-10-31T16:00:41-05:00Report on monster panos being used for research: When geologists wanted a better look at a Yosemite rock face in years past, they only had one option: climb the cliff. But now, thanks to super-high resolution gigapixel images created by a team of 70 photographers using GigaPan robotic imagers and a laser-mapping airplane, park geologist Greg Stock now has unprecedented access to the geological features of one of the world's most famous parks. And all from the comfort of his laptop. [...] ...intended to help Stock catalog and understand dangerous rock slides in Yosemite. Printed out at magazine-quality 300 dpi resolution, the photos stretch uninterrupted for 40 feet. [...] Scientists have long used advances in photographic techniques to aid in their observations and discoveries. In fact, the image compositing technology built into the GigaPan was initially developed by NASA to help image other planets in our solar system. Ultimately, projects like this underscore the fact that photographs can be data as easily as they can be art. The Yosemite project, which was launched and completed this summer, is already paying scientific dividends. Stock used the system to help his investigation of a rock slide that flattened a group of cabins...John SchottDARPA Hopes To Peer Into Hi-Rise Buildingstag:typepad.com,2003:post-574252432008-10-22T19:34:17-05:002008-10-22T19:34:17-05:00Report on new look-in sensing from Wired. Darpa, the Defense Department's way-out research arm, is looking to develop a suite of tools for "external sensing deep inside buildings." The ultimate goal of this Harnessing Infrastructure for Building Reconnaissance (HIBR) project: "reverse the adversaries' advantage of urban familiarity and sanctuary and provide U.S. Forces with complete above- and below-ground awareness." By the end of the project, Darpa wants a set of technologies that can see into a 10-story building with a two-level basement in a "high-density urban block" -- and produce a kind of digital blueprint of the place. Using sensors mounted on backpacks, vehicles, or aircraft, the HIBR gear would, hopefully, be able to pick out every room, wall, stairway, and basement in the building -- as well as all of the "electrical, plumbing, and installation systems." [...] It appears that the agency wants these HIBR gadgets to be able to track the people inside these buildings, as well. Why else would these sensors be required to "provide real-time updates" once U.S. troops enter the building? Perhaps there's more about the people-spotting tech, in the "classified appendix" to HIBR's request for proposals. There are already a number of efforts underway,...John SchottTin Eyetag:typepad.com,2003:post-570689732008-10-16T04:30:46-05:002008-10-16T04:30:46-05:00A new search engine, TinEye, is out that's dedicated to finding images on the web. You upload your picture to their server, and on the basis of its image analysis—its "digital fingerprint"—the software goes looking for matches all over the web. They have crawled about a half billion images to date, and are looking to extend that considerably in the future. The visual matching system can find cropped elements of a picture, and even ones that have been creatively "mixed." Plus, the site gives you an immediate visual comparison between your original search target image and what they have found. First use for me: tracking down visual elements that I have downloaded but not really properly notated. What a great way to find authors...and abusers.John SchottDigital SLRs With Hi-Def Video: An Overviewtag:typepad.com,2003:post-567991612008-10-10T02:34:00-05:002008-10-10T02:34:00-05:00With the debut of new digital SLRs from Nikon and Canon that feature digital video, Wired offers an overview of what it all means: For the first time, professional-grade single-lens reflex cameras are gaining the ability to record high-definition video. That capability, photographers say, has the potential to transform both still photography and moviemaking -- and it's largely thanks to advances in the semiconductor technology used to make the image sensors inside these cameras. [...] While compact digital cameras have had video-recording capabilities for years, the image quality provided by these cameras has been disappointing because of their small image sensors and comparatively poor, miniaturized optics. High-end video and movie cameras produce top-notch HD video and their interchangeable lenses give filmmakers the creative control they crave, but the cameras are big and expensive. Even the RED ONE, a super-high-definition movie camera that records digital video that's comparable in quality to that of film stock, rings up at about $17,000. That's a bargain compared to movie cameras, but it's still a lot of dough for most people. By contrast, the 21-megapixel Canon 5D Mark II, which shoots 1080p HD video, will cost $2,700 (plus the cost of lenses) when it becomes...John Schott