Information gathering by wireless camera node with passive pendulum mechanism

After the earthquake, it is very important to recognize the situation of the disaster area as soon as possible. Therefore, the objective of our research is to realize information gathering system applying wireless sensor network technology. This paper describes about development of a novel camera node for gathering the information and also experimental results by using the camera node via wireless multi-hop ad-hoc network. The wireless camera node consists of a small Linux embedded computer, a GPS adaptor, a CMOS camera with fish-eye lens and passive pendulum mechanism for maintain uniform posture of build-in camera passively. Thus, the wireless camera node can be set easily only to roll it up on the rough terrain. The developed node also can deliver gathered environmental information (video) to remote site by multi-hop transferring. It is experimented that the prototype can transfer the captured video information in the wireless ad-hoc network.