Future directions of smart cameras

Abstract

Forecasting the future trends of smart cameras is a real challenge due to the rapid evolution of technologies, applications, and user needs. This chapter attempts to provide perspectives of smart cameras based on the analysis of actual evidences and indicators. This chapter summarizes future directions and prospects of smart cameras in three underlying dimensions: the scientific interest and trends; application needs and expansions; and the market evolution, impulses, and trends. The key characteristics and advantages of smart cameras are integration and intelligence. The key enablers of integration and intelligence are the power behind embedded processors, ensuring reliability of vision algorithms working under real-world conditions. The 64-bit processing and multi-core processors [548] will find their ways into smart camera systems and significantly improve the system capabilities. The increase in processing power, together with functional re-programmability, will help overcome a key perceived disadvantage of smart cameras - flexibility. The future directions of smart cameras under the above-listed three aspects are analyzed in detail in this chapter. © 2010 Springer-Verlag US.