Linked smartphones catch the action from all angles

WHAT'S better than a smartphone packed full of features and with lightning-fast processing power? How about a handful ? or even hundreds ? of smartphones wirelessly networked together?

That's the idea behind CoSync, a software system that links devices together via their Bluetooth or Wi-Fi antennas, allowing multiple users to share their phones' features, such as camera, microphone and sensors, with other devices around them.

In a prototype, built by Eyal Toledano at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, six phones were linked and their camera flashes synchronised with the shutter on a master phone. This phone controlled the devices, sending out a signal on the peer-to-peer network to let them know exactly when to flash. In tests, the multiple phone rig outperformed single phones by evenly lighting subjects and avoiding washed out, overexposed images. Flashes going off from different angles and set to go off at different times could also make for more dramatic lighting effects, or be used to avoid red-eye, Toledano says.

In another test, he set up the phones in an arc around two people tossing a ball back and forth. By having all the phones take photos in quick succession, he was able to recreate the "bullet time" effect pioneered in the film The Matrix.

David Uhler, at business and technology consultancy Slalom in Seattle, says CoSync could have many applications in the realm of entertainment. People at concerts or live sporting events could enhance their experiences by networking their phones together. "Could you get a virtual front-row experience while sitting at the back? Could you be the spectator that catches the most epic play ever? These feel like very real extrapolations," he says.

Khanjan Mehta of Pennsylvania State University in University Park says CoSync could be a boon to education. "You could have students using their own cameras to collect data ? like photos of flowers at a learning centre ? and sharing them in real time with their peers back in the classroom," he says.

The system could also be useful for quickly setting up networks in refugee camps, war zones and disaster situations, where it could be used to assist first responders, Mehta adds.

This article appeared in print under the headline "Smartphones link together to catch all the action"

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