Rich, Famous, and Popular
Would you like to be rich, famous, and popular? Do you have mad computer vision skillz, and/or a Level 29 Jedi Ninja rating in embedded devices? You do? Excellent: drop what you’re doing and figure out
- how to laminate a bunch of CCD sensors onto the panels of a regulation soccer ball,
- how to transmit their images in near-real time to a nearby base station, and
- how to interpolate those images to create a reasonable picture.
What you’ll have when you’re done is a ball’s-eye view of a soccer game. A view of the striker’s incoming boot—meh. But the look on the keeper’s face as he makes the save? Or misses it?
It feels like it ought to be possible—if not this year, then next, or soon, anyway. Cheap flat cameras, low-power transmitters, and bug-eye image reconstruction are all available right now; the hardest part would be wiring up the ball in a way that doesn’t noticeably disturb its dynamics, but that’s just difficult, not impossible. And you could do it for American rules “football” too, if you wanted to lower yourself. It’d be fun, wouldn’t it? You know it would be. So what are you waiting for?