Daily Archives: June 7, 2007

Working the Camera: Real-Time Grid-Powered Surveillance

Two people happen to meet in a hallway. They begin to chat, and end up in deep discussion.

Suddenly, on the wall beside them, projected images appear. Video clips. Sounds. Information directly relevant to their discussion. And all made automatically available, where and when they need it most.

This is the vision for the University of Kentucky’s Ambient Virtual Assistant, a real-time grid application framework for managing grids that combine multiple sensors and output devices.

“You could think of AVA as a large-scale surveillance system, but it’s much more than that,” explains Hank Dietz of the University of Kentucky’s Center for Visualization and Virtual Environments.

“The concept is to have the ambient environment constantly monitoring what’s going on, not just recording, but intelligently reacting to what it sees and hears.”