Roomba have been around for a long time. Every time I have the opportunity to experiment and learn from a roomba robot I do. I tell it to start vacuuming and then I watch as it explores room after room, gets jammed on a chair leg, a drying thing or even under certain toilets. I also watch with frustration as it throws a bit of dirt too far, and drives by it over and over, and doesn’t pick it up.
In the near future we may see many more self-driving cars from many different manufacturers. If this is the case then we should think about reducing the number of roads and lanes devoted to cars. As robots drive cars, rather than humans so safety distances no longer need to exist, because every car is talking with every other car, as a swarm.
As I listened to a podcast about drones one of the people said “they write about swarms of drones but these are not swarms, for it to be a swarm each drone should talk with every drone and they should work as a single entity. Given this context I look forward to when we live in a world where cars are programmed to be part of a swarm, rather than individual units. This is because if cars drive themselves, they can be much closer, at a higher speed, whilst still being safe. It means that rather than have two or three lanes of traffic you would have just one, per direction. Imagine a motorway where cars behave as train cars, rather than driven cars.
I like to experiment with Bard and chatGPT. I like to see what their limits are, but with time and effort I like to get beyond their limits and get them to do what I want, without failing too often.
DJI and other brands have had self-editing options for years now, so the idea that software would edit the footage taken by the brand’s devices is not new. What is new is the desire people have to let AI replace their own creativity, and inspiration, to give the AI’s creative vision rather than their own.
I have worked with video cameras, from hi8 to MiniDV, Beta SP, SX, DVCAM, XDCAM, AVCHD and other formats. Cameras have grown and shrunk, controls have changed from manual to partially automated to fully automated. Television news and Studio camera productions have gone from three or four camera operators to needing a couple and then a single camera operator sitting in a side room with controls for all three cameras. Crane and jib moves are programmed so that the same action is performed at the start of each news program. Virtual Reality technology and Virtual reality headsets are going down in price. Apps provide mobile phone users with 360° videos in normal vision and 3D. The technology we use to watch 360° content and immerse ourselves in the VR world could be adapted and made suitable for multi-camera production. It would be nice for software to be written that moves the camera as we move our heads. This technology is already used by gunners flying in Apache helicopters. The point would be to adapt this technology to camera operating. I would manual controls for zoom and focus and a control  to lock off the camera once the desired shot is ready. Imagine how much simpler controlling drone and crane cameras would be. Imagine also how much nicer it will be for conference attendees, concert goers and UN delegates if a smaller remote controlled camera could be used. Camera operators often obscure people’s view. This technology would be less intrusive. Camera operators could sit rather than stand for hours at a time, barely able to move. VR goggles and the technology they contain should not be used just to consume a finished product but should instead be used as a creative/production tool. VR goggles and related tech could be used to simplify people’s work, to make it more intuitive. Multicamera production with VR goggles would reduce costs and make high-quality video coverage achievable even for modest budgets. The excuse for using a single webcam to Livestream an event will be gone making virtual attendance of events more enjoyable.