A new technology called ARGUS has the ability to capture details (like an individual’s clothing or a bird’s nest!) all from 17,500 feet (5,334 meters) above, and (of course) all the footage could potentially be stored up to a million terabytes of video each day, the same as 5,000 hours of high definition footage.
Developed by the DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), ARGUS is the acronym of Autonomous Real-time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance. Engineer Yiannis Antonaides designed it using 368 basic cellphone cameras. ARGUS boasts 1.8 billion pixels and is also the world’s highest resolution camera, making it one enviable piece of technology. “Argus is the equivalent of having up to 100 predators look at an area the size of a medium-sized city at once. You can see individuals crossing the street, you can see individuals walking in parking lots. There is actually enough resolution to be able to see the people waving their arms or walking around or what kind of clothes they wear,” Antonaides revealed.
Employing the 368 cellphone cameras, ARGUS combines video from each one and subsequently makes a 1.8 billion pixel video stream system. ¿Is ARGUS currently being used to spy on Americans? Antonaides refuses to say. “I’m not at liberty to discuss plans with the government,” he admitted. “But if we had our choice, we would like ARGUS to be over the same area 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That’s not very achievable with manned platforms- this is where UAVs come in and they’re absolutely the perfect platform,” he explained.
