ProCam is an interdisciplinary Make project supported by EPFL and federates Bachelor, Master, and Doctoral students of EPFL. Students can elect to take ProCam as part of their semester and final projects and receive credits and will be supervised by an EPFL student or researcher. Likewise, various courses in EPFL and notably the Image and Video Processing as well as Media Security include mini-projects in the framework of ProCam.
The objective of ProCam is to design, build and test a new type of connected camera with multiple sensors that can track people while protecting their privacy and at the same time identify those with high body temperature. The device is in form of a kitset made of off-shelf components and open software that will allow anybody to build it at low cost, easily install and start using it. A dedicated server records all captured footage in a secure and anonymized way with the possibility of further analysis, visualization, and eventual de-anonymization. An early prototype of the camera system with an enclosure to protect its components has been created.
As low-cost infrared/thermal sensors have lower resolution and precision, three such sensors are combined in order to be able to increase both quality and precisions by relying on advanced image processing algorithms.