Battery-free 'smart' camera to find its own pose, location

A network of energy-harvesting sensor nodes equipped with onboard cameras can automatically determine each camera's pose and location using optical cues, scientists from Disney Research and University of Washington (UW) have revealed.

This capability can enable networks of hundreds or thousands of sensors to operate without batteries or external power and require minimal maintenance.

Such networks could be part of the "Internet of Things" (IoT) which objects can communicate to and share information with to create smart environments.

Future iteractions of this sensing technology has the potential to enable low cost and maintenance-free IoT applications by eliminating the need for external wiring or regular battery replacement.

"Networks of hundreds or thousands of these sensors could be used to monitor the condition of infrastructure such as bridges, industrial equipment monitoring, and home security monitoring," said Alanson P. Sample, research scientist with Disney Research.

The ability of each node to determine its own location makes deployment of autonomous sensor nodes easier and the sensor data they produce more meaningful.

Sample and Joshua Smith, associate professor of computer science and engineering at University of Washington, and others presented their findings at "Ubicomp 2015" conference in Osaka, Japan, last week.