原创 Is your smartphone watching you?

One of the hot topics in Embedded Space at the moment is that of Embedded Vision – the creation of machines that see.

Embedded vision would be coming to products sooner that you might think. Well, things are moving faster than even I had expected. By some strange quirk of fate, I was just reading about the new Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone, which will go on sale around the world sometime in the next couple of months.

The Galaxy S4 will be able to use its camera to watch you watching it (if you see what I mean). If you are streaming a video from YouTube and you look away to talk to someone, for example, the S4 will see that you are no longer looking at it and it will automatically pause the video. When your eyeballs eventually return to the screen, the S4 will immediately resume streaming the video.

Now, I don't know about you, but I'm starting to wonder where this might all lead. Call me a "worrywart" if you will, but suppose someone hacks into your phone and starts watching what you are doing at any time of the day or night...