Cool projects from Microsoft Research
I already mentioned Wallop earlier, but there were a couple of other cool research projects presented at the Nordic Microsoft Academic Days conference this week:
SenseCam
SenseCam is a badge-sized wearable camera that captures up to 2000 VGA images per day into 128Mbyte FLASH memory. In addition, sensor data such as movement, light level and temperature is recorded every second. This is similar to an aircraft Black Box accident recorder but miniaturised for the human body. It could help with memory recall, e.g. where did I leave my spectacles or keys? who did I meet last week? by doing a rewind of the days events. If a person has an accident, the events and images leading up to this will be recorded, and these could be useful to medical staff. It could also be used for automatic diary generation.
Sensors trigger a new recording. For example, each time the person walks into a new room, this light change transition is detected and the room image is captured with an ultra wide angle or fish-eye lens. Other triggers include, time, sudden movement, or a person nearby. A hand gesture can also manually capture an image. An accelerometer is used for image stabilisation to reduce blurred images caused by camera motion. This is an essential feature of any truly wearable camera.
The sensor data (motion, light, temperature, and near infrared images) is recorded for later correlation with other user data, for example in the MyLifeBits system. MyLifeBits will allow the large number of images generated daily to be easily searched and accessed. Future SenseCams will also capture audio and possibly heart rate or other physiological data.
Cω
Cω is a research programming language. It is an experimental language with C# at its core, with extensions for integrating data access and concurrency constructs directly into the programming language itself. Data integration features were previously known as X# and Xen.
Cω compiler preview can be downloaded from here and the documentation can be browsed here.
