Cameras are mounted everywhere in sports these days. During the Olympics we had underwater cams for swimmers and athlete's-eye views for bikes. Now there's a camera that could be mounted on a helmet to record not just the athlete's view but her heart rate, acceleration and loction, too.
Called the INCA, the camera has a processor as powerful as any PC, which
allows a lot of functionality crammed into a space less than
three inches on a side. The INCA was designed by the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS.
Its processing power gives INCA the ability to crunch a lot of data coming from the lens as well as from sensors that can be linked wirelessly to the camera using Bluetooth or WLAN.
An athlete (or anyone else) could wear a sensor on her chest to track her heart rate, for example, or the camera could employ face recognition software to recognize who's on the sidelines. The film's viewer would see not only an athlete's eye view of a race course (in say, a marathon) but also see how hard the runner was working as her heart rate rose.
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It is also tough, built to resist sand, water and extreme temperatures.
The operating system in the camera is also pretty flexible: rather than go with a proprietary system the designers built it to work with Android devices.
Unfortunately you can't buy it yet -– it will make its debut at the IBC trade show in Amsterdam in September.
Image: Fraunhofer IIS
