Monday, August 4, 2014

Spy Tradecraft FutureWatch - 3-D Room Scan Mapping

Despite the promise of Google's Movidius-equipped Project Tango, there are still no depth-sensing, SLR-stomping smartphones on the market. But Movidius thinks that could change soon, thanks to its brand new chip: the Myriad 2 vision processor unit (VPU). 

"The Myriad 2 is going to provide more than 20x the power efficiency of the Myriad 1, and enable camera features that were not possible before in mobile devices," CEO Remi El-Ouazzane tells me. If you'll recall, Tango's original tech brought faster focus, improved depth of field, near-optical zooming and higher light sensitivity to smartphone cameras (and now, tablets).



It also let researchers scan a room in 3D to provide interior navigation, among other cool tricks. (more)

From a Security Scrapbook Blue Blaze Irregular...
So, letting uncleared persons into secure facilities just became even more stupid. With new processing chips, surreptitious video recording becomes even more dangerous. Movidius makes the chips. And Matterport makes the 3D modelling software. This is very cool but at the same time very disturbing. How many tradecraft applications will this have? Security managers should see, at least, the Matterport video.