HomCam: A Wireless 360-Degree Wearable Streaming Camera for Remote Situational Awareness

The growth of mobile and wearable technologies has enabled a host of new applications, including remote situational awareness, in which a device worn by a remote partner can simulate being present in the remote location for an observer. We illustrate this idea by constructing the HomCam, a helmet-based omnidirectional video system that gives an observer the 360-degree perspective of a remote wearer. To our knowledge, the HomCam was the first wearable system that enabled real-time streaming of 360-degree video to a remote location built from commercial-of-the-shelf hardware. This paper describes related efforts, the HomCam prototype, its visual display, and an initial test of network performance. This prototype demonstrates some of the challenges of remote situation awareness and contributes to designers’ implementation of related systems.