A camera to capture your entire life

A state-of-the-art camera will soon be available that you can wear as a pendant to record every moment of your life.

Originally invented to help jog the memories of people suffering with Alzheimer’s disease, the device might be used to create “lifelogs” that archive their entire lives. So far, only 500 have been made, most for use by researchers.

“What’s great about these kinds of memory technologies is that they can be very usable for ordinary people,” says Henry Kautz, a computer scientist at the University of Rochester, New York, who works on technology to assist cognition.

Worn on a cord around the neck, the camera takes pictures automatically as often as once every 30 seconds. It also uses an accelerometer and light sensors to snap an image when a person enters a new environment, and an infrared sensor to take one when it detects the body heat of a person in front of the wearer. It can fit 30,000 images onto its 1-gigabyte memory, the New Scientist reported.

Now Vicon, based in Oxford, UK, which specialises in motion-capture technology for the movie industry, has licensed the technology for the camera from Microsoft and intends to put it into large-scale production, the report said.

Vicon’s version will retail for 500 pounds (about $820) and will also be marketed to researchers at first; it will go on sale in the next few months. A consumer version should be released in 2010.

The gadget is set to be launched at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Chicago this weekend, in conjunction with a conference on research using SenseCam so far, the report said.