Let us say you are with a group of friends and want to take a group-snap. It is always possible to use your camera’s timer device to set the focus and run to your positions. But this does not always help when you have to take several pictures with your friends since it would mean you have to run to and from your camera several times.
Sony Ericsson has described a new sound-based remote control technology for their smartphones that could make taking self-portaits a pleasure. The phone shall come with a ‘Sound Photo Trigger‘ option that can be turned on or off as required. While the trigger is on, the user may either use specific sounds or use speech recognition technology to trigger the camera by uttering certain words. The inventors write in a patent application,
“Trigger sound determination may be performed by detecting a rapid deviation of sound from sensed ambient noise level. For example, the user could trigger exposure of a photo by stamping a foot, snapping fingers, clapping a hand against a body, or by other sharp sounds. As an alternative, speech recognition can be used as a trigger mechanism. A predetermined word or phrase may be chosen as a photo trigger and stored as data in the phone memory. Speech recognition processing can be performed on received speech signals to trigger an image exposure if the predetermined word or phrase is recognized.”
Sounds interesting, but I would be surprised if such a technology didn’t already exist..It feels like 2002..