快猫短视频

ANYONE with a digital camera and a PC can now track where intruders or
saboteurs have been in their home, garden or office, thanks to software
originally developed to improve security at a nuclear lab.

The Change Detection System, developed by Greg Lancaster, James L. Jones and
their colleagues at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory
in Idaho Falls, takes two roughly similar digital pictures and lines them up.
Any differences are immediately apparent as the user clicks back and forth
between them.

Importantly, the pictures need not be taken from precisely the same distance
or perspective each time because the computer can adjust one of the pictures to
compensate. For example, if a building is photographed first head-on, and then
at an angle, it appears to be squashed sideways in the second picture. The
computer stretches the picture to restore the building to its proper width.

Because the computer handles the tricky task of image alignment, any user can
track an object or scene simply by taking an occasional quick-and-dirty
snapshot, Jones says. 鈥淎 ten-year-old child capable of taking a digital picture
could use this,鈥� he says.

The software can reveal footprints that are invisible to the eye in a gravel
driveway. Or it can reveal tiny changes in a computer鈥檚 connectors that would
otherwise go unnoticed and which prove somebody has plugged and unplugged a
cable鈥攑erhaps to steal data. Karl Pitts of the Pacific Northwest National
Lab in Richland, Washington, is impressed. 鈥淚t鈥檚 an excellent combination of
what the computer does best and what a person does best.鈥�

Pitts speculates that the software could even be used around the house to
make sure kids are behaving: 鈥淵ou could easily detect when someone has been
sneaking M&Ms out of the bowl.鈥�