Ubiquitous Camera Research Articles

Digital Retina: A Way to Make the City Brain More Efficient by Visual Coding

The ubiquitous camera networks in the city brain system grow at a rapid pace, creating massive amounts of images and videos at a range of spatial-temporal scales and thereby forming the “biggest” big data. However, the sensing system often lags behind the construction of the fast-growing city brain system, in the sense that such exponentially growing data far exceed today’s sensing capabilities. Therefore, critical issues arise regarding how to better leverage the existing city brain system and significantly improve the city-scale performance in intelligent applications. To tackle the unprecedented challenges, we articulate a vision towards a novel visual computing framework, termed as <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">digital retina</i> , which aligns high-efficiency sensing models with the emerging Visual Coding for Machine (VCM) paradigm. In particular, digital retina may consist of video coding, feature coding, model coding, as well as their joint optimization. The digital retina is biologically-inspired, rooted on the widely accepted view that the retina encodes the visual information for human perception, and extracts features by the brain downstream areas to disentangle the visual objects. Within the digital retina framework, three streams, i.e., video stream, feature stream, and model stream, work collaboratively over the end-edge-cloud platform. In particular, the compressed video stream serves for human vision, the compact feature stream targets for machine vision, and the model stream incrementally updates deep learning models to improve the performance of human/machine vision tasks. We have developed a prototype to demonstrate the technical advantages of digital retina, and extensive experiments have been conducted to validate that it is able to effectively support the video big data analysis and retrieval in the intelligent city system. In particular, up to <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$7000\times $ </tex-math></inline-formula> compression ratio could be realized for visual data compression while maintaining competitive performance with pristine signal in a series of visual analysis tasks.

Challenging the frivolities of power: the ubiquitous camera and Nigerian political elites

AbstractThe last decade has witnessed the ubiquitous presence of camera devices, from conventional cameras to communication gadgets (such as mobile phones, iPads and tablets), built with the capacity to produce, edit, disseminate and interact through photographs. In this article, I analyse visual materials circulated on Facebook, YouTube and Nairaland (a locally popular social-networking website used by Nigerians) to demonstrate how the ubiquity of the camera, its overt and surreptitious use, and the transformation and circulation of the resulting photographs constitute political acts in a postcolonial African context. The camera's ubiquity encompasses the increasing availability of photographic devices, but also the growing, and politically charged, inclination to put them to use, framing the world through which their users move. The production and dissemination of the resulting photograph gives it the status of an eyewitness account, amidst contestations that heighten its force as political articulation. Lastly, the ubiquitous camera is a means through which the public observes, polices and exposes the duplicity of state functionaries. The article contributes to an understanding of the ways in which digital infrastructure allows public access to the political undertaking of photography.

Adolescents, Sexting and Human Rights

International law has led to many countries changing the definition of ‘child pornography’ to include adolescents above the age of consent but below the age of majority. At the same time, technological change has led to personal photographic devices (most notably the ubiquitous camera phone) becoming common-place and adolescents are participating in behaviour known as ‘sexting’. Whilst there are different versions of this behaviour, one form is where an adolescent freely takes a sexualised photograph of herself and sends it to another. Theoretically this could breach child pornography laws but it is argued here that it is an expression of the adolescent’s sexual identity and thus protected by Articles 8 and 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Special Section Guest Editorial: Mobile Computational Photography

For many photographers today, mobile photography is photography. According to statistics available on the photo-sharing site CrossRef[[XSLOpenURL/]], over the last year the most popular camera used to take photos on the site has been an Apple iPhone. In fact, during the summer of 2012, the iPhone 4 and the iPhone 4S occupied the number one and number two spots. The success of mobile photography perhaps goes hand in glove with the rise of social networking sites. Mobile photography has enabled any individual with a cell phone (the ubiquitous mobile camera) to quickly and easily share visual images of their lives. Mobile cameras are cheap, small, lightweight, and connected—pictures can be taken anytime and anywhere—and shared immediately.

Dependable management system for ubiquitous camera array service in an elder-care center

The concept of smart homes (SH) has been extensively popularized, and there are a lot of technologies that need to be continuously utilized and integrated in such a concept. In this article, some applied problems of camera array (CA) in the SH are discussed and solved. Determining how to build an effective management method for CA in order to ensure that user privacy is not encroached upon is an important issue. In SH, the applications of CA are very diversified. We suggest that a satisfactory management method of CA should be based on the open service gateway initiative (OSGi) that includes resource management and monitoring (RMM) and UPnP security for the problems of resources and privacy, respectively. Finally, an applied example of CA is addressed in an elder-care center (EC). Simulation results show that the management strategy and application of CA based on an OSGi is satisfactory.

Visual chitchat: The use of camera phones in visual interpersonal communication

Photography and photo sharing nowadays form an important part of mobile phone communication, as evidenced by the rather ubiquitous camera phone. The purpose of the article is to examine how the practices of mobile phone communication influence the sharing of camera phone photographs. In pursuing this goal, the ritual view of communication, formulated by James W. Carey, is utilized as a theoretical framework. According to the ritual view, communication serves in sustaining contact between communicators, without placing importance on the information that is exchanged. The conclusion in the article is that ritual communication is evident in how camera phone photographs are captured and communicated in order to maintain social cohesion among a group or among individuals. In addition to a theoretically oriented analysis, the article utilizes results from a qualitative study focusing on the mobile photo sharing practices of a group of Finnish camera phone users.

GPS-based visual tracking for Pan/Tilt/Zoom camera in a ubiquitous camera environment

The installation of cameras is becoming evermore pervasive, especially in urban areas. In response to this Ubiquitous Camera (UbiCam) environment, a new service, called GPS-based Visual Tracking (GPS-VT), incorporating the Global Positioning System (GPS) and the visual tracking function, was proposed in our previous study, whereby an object can be tracked when it is within any field-of-view (FOV) of any wide-angle camera according to its real-time GPS coordinates. To realise GPS-VT on a Pan/Tilt/Zoom (PTZ) camera, a new approach is now proposed in this paper. This approach includes the calibration of the PTZ camera, the transformation of GPS coordinates to pan, tilt and zoom values, and the incorporation of an image-based tracker for the precise tracking of the target object. A prototype system is implemented to demonstrate the feasibility of GPS-VT for the PTZ camera.

DIY Dying

This article examines video activism in a context where ubiquitous camera technologies and online video sharing platforms are radically changing the media landscape in which demonstrations and political activism operates. The author discusses a number of YouTube videos documenting and narrating the recurring, anti-capitalist demonstrations in Europe in the past decade. With the death of Ian Tomlinson in London during the 2009 G20 protests as an empirical starting point, the author raises questions of how video documentation of this event links up with previous protest events by juxtaposing representations of ‘the moment of death’ (Zelizer, 2004, 2010) of protesters in the past. This article suggests that these videos work as (1) an archive of action and activist memory, (2) a site of commemoration in a online shrine for grieving, and (3) a space to provide and negotiate visual evidence of police violence and state repression. The author offers a re-articulation of the longstanding debate on visual evidence, action, and testimony in video activism. The results are suggestive of how vernacular commemorative genres of mourning and paying tribute to victims of police violence are fused with the online practices of bearing witness and producing visual evidence in new creative modes of using video for change.

A Novel Vision-based Location Authentication Approach in a Ubiquitous Camera Environment

Location-based services (LBSs) have been emerging in recent years. Mobile devices with built-in GPS receiver (Global Positioning System), called GPS-enabled mobile devices, will also become an important trend in the near future. Location information and authentication of mobile clients are critical for accessing desired LBSs. In this paper, a novel vision-based approach, called VLocAuth, is proposed to incorporate a ubiquitous camera (UbiCam) environment for location authentication. The operation of VLocAuth relies on three kinds of servers, including LBS server, authentication server (AS), and camera server (CS). VLocAuth consists of two phases: initialization and location authentication phases. In the initialization phase, a mobile client requests user identification and related information from LBS server via a secure channel. In the location authentication phase, a temporal identification provided by LBS server is used for data communication among the client, AS, and CS to achieve privacy protection. Then, CS authenticates the location of a mobile client by matching the location and the moving objects in the real-time camera image to ensure the client at the location of the GPS coordinates. The security analysis shows that VLocAuth is secure against replay attack and man-in-the-middle attack. It also satisfies unforgeability, privacy, confidentially, integrity, simplicity, and practicability requirements. A simulation study is designed to show the influence of a node density, type of GPS receiver, and a network delay on VLocAuth. Besides, a matching tool is implemented for measuring the time of the key matching step of VLocAuth in a practical environment. These results show that VLocAuth is feasible for location authentication and meets the trend of UbiCam environment in the near future.

A Novel Visual Tracking Approach Incorporating Global Positioning System in a Ubiquitous Camera Environment

Global Positioning System (GPS) is popularly used in object tracking. Current GPS tracking system is mainly based on a digital map of a GIS (geographic information system) and marks the location of an object on the map. However, it is insufficient to perceive the situation of the object. On the other hand, the deployment of cameras is toward a ubiquitous camera (UbiCam) environment, especially in the urban area. If GPS can be incorporated with UbiCam environment, the visual information acquired from a camera is useful to improve the problem of current GPS tracking systems. Therefore, an approach called GODTA (GPS-based Object Detection and Tracking Approach) is proposed in this paper. GODTA is mainly based on the coordinate transformation method. The transformation is according to the parameters computed from a set of five calibration points. If the transformed image coordinate is within the rectangle range of the camera image, it means the object is within the FOV (field-of-view) of the camera, and then the object can be labeled on the image. Two experiments, fixed position and continuous tracking, were also designed to evaluate the performance of GODTA. The lowest average locating error ( LE ) of the transformed image coordinate is 42 and 38 pixels, respectively. The results show that GODTA is feasible for fulfilling GPS-based visual tracking service and incorporates GPS system and UbiCam environment successfully.

Mobile Visual Communication

AbstractIn this article I will elucidate the concept of photo messaging, and examine camera phones in the context of communication and photography. Camera functions are nowadays a popular add-on to the mobile (cellular) phone. Users can send photographs directly from the phone as photo messages. Findings suggest that the ubiquitous camera phone, and photo messaging, may substantially change the ways in which people use personal photography. The imaging capacity of mobile phones is becoming a potential part of perpetual visual contact. Thus taking and sending photographs on a camera phone represents a new resource for visual communication.

Stalking the cannibals

Outwardly Dennis O'Rourke's film, Cannibal Tours, is just another travel documentary, but to categorize it thus is to misunderstand its significance. `Straight' readings of the film present it as an example of the negative impacts of tourism or as a commentary on touristic encounters with the exotic. We part company from such readings because they largely ignore the filmmaker's art, the role of O'Rourke in constructing the film's narrative. O'Rourke employs the ubiquitous camera to present his critique of a western mindset that continues to be fascinated by the primitive Other. Our discussion focuses on both the filmmaker's art and the lure of the primitive as an oneiric exercise for western tourists. Specifically, we explore the role of the camera in constructing the relationship between modernity and the pre-modern Other. Overall, then, this discussion represents a journey through the mind of O'Rourke, a journey into his framing of tourism.