SocialSync: Sub-Frame Synchronization in a Smartphone Camera Network

Richard Latimer, Jason Holloway, Ashok Veeraraghavan, and Ashutosh Sabharwal

Abstract: SocialSync is a sub-frame synchronization protocol for capturing images simultaneously using a smartphone camera network. By synchronizing image captures to within a frame period, multiple smartphone cameras, which are often in use in social settings, can be used for a variety of applications including light field capture, depth estimation, and free viewpoint television. Currently, smartphone camera networks are limited to capturing static scenes due to motion artifacts caused by frame misalignment. To overcome this synchronization challenge, we first characterize frame capture on Android devices by analyzing the statistics of camera setup latency and frame delivery to the software application. Next, we develop the SocialSync protocol to achieve sub-frame synchronization between devices by estimating frame capture timestamps millisecond accuracy. Finally, we demonstrate the effectiveness of SocialSync on mobile devices by reducing motion-induced artifacts when recovering the light field.

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Citation:

R. Latimer, J. Holloway, A. Veeraraghavan, and A. Sabharwal. SocialSync: Sub-frame synchronization in a smartphone camera network. In L. Agapito, M. M. Bronstein, and C. Rother, editors, Computer Vision - ECCV 2014 Workshops, volume 8926 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pages 561-575. Springer International Publishing, 2015.

[+] BibTex Citation

@incollection{latimerSocialSync2015,
year={2015},
isbn={978-3-319-16180-8},
booktitle={Computer Vision - ECCV 2014 Workshops},
volume={8926},
series={Lecture Notes in Computer Science},
editor={Agapito, Lourdes and Bronstein, Michael M. and Rother, Carsten},
doi={10.1007/978-3-319-16181-5_43},
title={SocialSync: Sub-Frame Synchronization in a Smartphone Camera Network},
publisher={Springer International Publishing},
author={Latimer, Richard and Holloway, Jason and Veeraraghavan, Ashok and Sabharwal, Ashutosh},
pages={561-575}
}

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