Cloud-Powered Sight for All: Showing the Cloud What You See
- Paramvir Bahl ,
- Matthai Philipose ,
- Victor Bahl
International Workshop on Mobile Cloud Computing and Services (MCS) |
Published by Association for Computing Machinery, Inc.
We argue that for computers to do more for us, we need to show the cloud what we see and embrace cloud-powered sight for mobile users. We present sample applications that will be empowered by this vision, discuss why the timing is right to tackle it, and offer our initial thoughts on some of the important research challenges.
Our rationale is simple: visual information is the richest form of human sensory input. More often than not, it also requires the highest information transfer rate. The human nervous system is centered on the visual experience. We learn, reason, and act based on what we see. Our interactions and collaborations with fellow humans are often triggered by our visual senses and many of our social experiences are influenced by it. By showing our computer what we see, we can not only create the next generation of personalized service but also overcome some the fundamental limitations of being human.
Glimpse
We see a new wave of innovations in mobile computing that are based on capturing and processing a user’s visual experience in real-time, on the go. While this is cool, several major hurdles need to be overcome first. For example, today the energy and computing cost of continuously capturing, processing and analyzing our visual experience is challenging. In Project Glimpse we are investigating and pursuing experimental and analytical characterization of image sensors, high bandwidth and low-jitter networking and novel cloud computing techniques that enable online reactive analysis. This video shows one of the scenarios we are building to showcase our research results.