Science Fiction Dictionary
A  B  C  D  E  F  G  H  I  J  K  L  M  N  O  P  Q  R  S  T  U  V  W  X  Y  Z

 

Smart Video Cams - DARPA's Mind's Eye

An intelligent video camera is next on DARPA's wish list. Their upcoming Mind's Eye conference will spell out what they want:

One of the desired military capabilities resulting from this new form of visual intelligence is a smart camera, with sufficient visual intelligence that it can report on activity in an area of observation. A camera with this kind of visual intelligence could be employed as a payload on a broad range of persistent stare surveillance platforms, from fixed surveillance systems, which would conceivably benefit from abundant computing power, to camera‐equipped perch‐and‐ stare micro air vehicles, which would impose extreme limitations on payload size and available computing power. For the purpose of this research, employment of this capability on man‐ portable unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) is assumed. This provides a reasonable yet challenging set of development constraints, along with the potential to transition the technology to an objective ground force capability.

I think that they might as well add the ability to fly around and gather visual information. If they do, their smart video cam sounds a lot like Karen Traviss' bee cams from her 2004 novel City of Pearl:

Eddie realized just how close the wess'har camp must have been to the colony when he saw the first of the fighters...

...He made a mental note to have the bee cam permanently active in the future, just in case he missed another chance of good footage...

He set the bee cam to focus on any movement and enjoyed the day around him. Who would have thought he would end up doing wildlife documentaries?

While DARPA is handing out money, they should also talk to the creators of this real-life film-making robot, which is able to analyze individual film frames and then join the best parts together as a finished film.


(Selected robot film images)

From The Mind's Eye (pdf) via Wired.

Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 3/18/2010)

Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.

| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |

Would you like to contribute a story tip? It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add it here.

Comment/Join discussion ( 1 )

Related News Stories - (" Artificial Intelligence ")

Will An AI Found A New Religion?
'You must decide how you will worship Me.' - Frank Herbert, 1965.

Orwell's Nightmare Of AI-Written Novels Comes To Pass
'Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.' - George Orwell, 1948.

RentAHuman App Lets AI Agents Hire Humans
'She wouldn't stop until Antar had told her everything he knew about whatever it was that she was playing with on her screen.' - Amitav Ghosh, 1995.

AIs Turn Marxist Under Bad Management
'It was a general strike of the robots...' - Harl Vincent, 1934.

 

Google
  Web TechNovelgy.com   

Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.

 

 

 

 

Science Fiction Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's   1950's
1960's   1970's
1980's   1990's
2000's   2010's

Current News

Will An AI Found A New Religion?
'You must decide how you will worship Me.'

Terraformer Industries Make Methane
'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock...'

I Need An Outdoor Spherical Display
'Usually a spherical display hovered in the centre...'

Worm Disrupts Physics Simulations Undetected For A Decade
'It diverts integers of the data, the fundamental message-units, so that they no longer agree.'

Muxcard Redditor's DIY Credit Card-Sized Computer
It's a computer, but just barely.

'Soft Assembly' Fashions That Fashion Themselves On The Wearer
'Clothes are no longer made from dead fibers of fixed color and texture that can approximate only crudely to the vagrant human figure...'

Orwell's Nightmare Of AI-Written Novels Comes To Pass
'Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.'

ISS Plagued By Leak - Again!
'There were perhaps a dozen bladder-like objects in the tunnel...'

Ridiculous 'Ghost Murmur' Tech Still Science Fiction
'...it rears and spreads its fan. It can pick one man out of a crowd.'

Outdoor Video Screens Can Be Arbitrarily Large
The Shape of Things To Come

Infrared Contact Lenses To See In The Dark
'I can see in the dark, Case.'

What'll You Have? Extinct Animals Returned, Or Synthetic Eggshells?
'...a new plastic with the characteristics of an avian eggshell.'

Sunbird Pulsar Fusion Like Leinster's Space Tug
'It was a pushpot, which could not possibly be called a jet plane because it could not possibly fly. Only it did.'

RentAHuman App Lets AI Agents Hire Humans
'She wouldn't stop until Antar had told her everything he knew about whatever it was that she was playing with on her screen.'

Unitree CEO Wang Xingxing Runs With His G1 Robot Army
'Does thinking you're the last sane man on the face of the Earth make you crazy?'

AIs Turn Marxist Under Bad Management
'It was a general strike of the robots...'

More SF in the News Stories

More Beyond Technovelgy science news stories

Home | Glossary | Invention Timeline | Category | New | Contact Us | FAQ | Advertise |
Technovelgy.com - where science meets fiction™

Copyright© Technovelgy LLC; all rights reserved.