Enlarge / PrivacyLens utilizes a circular lens for regular digital footage and a square lens to detect heat, enhancing its capability to identify individuals within footage and replace them with anonymous stick figures. (credit: Brenda Ahearn, Michigan Engineering)
Robotic vacuum cleaners like Roombas offer extraordinary convenience, particularly appealing to pets that enjoy riding on them during their cleaning cycles. However, these devices come equipped with obstacle-detection cameras that occasionally capture private moments; a notable incident occurred in 2020 when images of a young woman in her bathroom were unintentionally shared on social media after being uploaded to the cloud from a Roomba’s surveillance feature.
This situation highlights an ongoing dilemma in our increasingly connected world, where internet-enabled cameras are employed not only for home surveillance and health monitoring but also for other applications such as self-driving vehicles and security systems.
To address these privacy concerns, engineers at the University of Michigan have introduced an innovative solution known as PrivacyLens—a new type of camera capable of identifying individuals through heat signatures while obscuring their identities by replacing real likenesses with basic stick figure representations. The project recently gained attention following the submission of a provisional patent detailed in a paper presented at the Symposium on Privacy Enhancing Technologies last month.
“Typically, consumers remain unaware of how data is handled by smart home gadgets they rely on,” explained co-author Alanson Sample. ”In numerous instances, audio recordings and video captures are continuously sent to manufacturers’ cloud servers without justification regarding their necessity for operational functions.” He emphasized that devices designed to eliminate personally identifiable information (PII) prior to transferring sensitive material will provide consumers with significantly enhanced safety compared to today’s offerings.
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