Stable Multi-Target Tracking in Real-Time Surveillance Video (CVPR 2011) (by activevision)
Camden Council Robocop (by jimjay1)
“A Dallas drone hobbyist was flying his rig around one bright Texan afternoon, scouting the skies, when he hovered across something perturbing: an enormous, oozing river of blood behind a meatpacking plant.”
Drone Pilot Discovers River of Meat Blood, via Tom A.
“The Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Systems Association (UAVSA), a trade group that represents the drone industry to the UK government, has recommended drones deployed in Britain should be shown to “benefit mankind in general”, be decorated with humanitarian-related advertisements, and be painted bright colours to distance them from those used in warzones, details from a UAVSA presentation show. […]
Industry sources see the move as part of a progression towards larger sections of UK airspace becoming segregated in the near future, leading to an area of the sky sanctioned explicitly for the use of drones for a range of purposes, including law enforcement, border patrol, firefighting and road traffic monitoring.
”
“Asked for documentation of Tariq and Waheed’s deaths, Akbar did not provide pictures of the missile strike scene. Virtually none exist, since drones often target people who show up at the scene of an attack.”
“‘These devices could also extend the range of potential breaches of privacy. You could fly over your neighbour’s garden or up to their bedroom window. And drones could be a great asset for criminals to “case a joint” or to keep watch for the police. There are also concerns that the roll-out of citizen drones might be disingenuously used by the police to justify and speed up police acquisition and use of drones for the surveillance of protests. Police departments in the UK and across the US are eager to use drones, but there has been little or no debate about the impacts on public safety, privacy and liberty. And there has certainly been no public engagement about this expansion of police surveillance’”
“A small camera fitted to the glasses can capture 400 facial images per second and send them to a central computer database storing up to 13 million faces. The system can compare biometric data at 46,000 points on a face and will immediately signal any matches to known criminals or people wanted by police. If there is a match a red signal will appear on a small screen connected to the glasses, alerting the police officer of the need to take further action or make an arrest. The devices will soon be tested at football matches and concerts and police in Brazil, South America’s biggest country, are already planning to use them during the next World Cup. The camera will generally be used to scan faces in crowds up to 50 metres (164ft) away but can be adjusted, if searching for a specific target, to recognise faces as far as 12 miles away.”
Brazilian police to use ‘Robocop-style’ glasses at World Cup - Telegraph
“Last year, we read in Technology Review that “a prototype computer vision system can generate a live text description of what’s happening in a feed from a surveillance camera. Although not yet ready for commercial use, the system demonstrates how software could make it easier to skim or search through video or image collections.” With this image to text system, one could easily search for specific content in a video without relying on the surrounding texts, which, if they are even there to begin with, may or may not be relevant to the video. It has the potential to become a powerful forensic tool. For instance, instead of watching hours of video footage of relentlessly boring urban spectacle of a boring urban intersection to find out when a red car important to your criminal investigation might have sped through, you type in “red car” in the search field.”
“Like most DARPA-sponsored projects, the Nano Air Vehicle ($TBA) isn’t the easiest item to describe. Under development by AV, it’s designed to be used in urban surveillance and reconnaissance missions, mimicking the biology of a hummingbird to achieve impressive statistics such as a hover endurance of eight minutes with no external power source, the ability to fly indoors and out, transitioning easily between the two, the ability to be controlled using nothing but the live video stream from the aircraft, and the ability to fly in windy conditions.”
