MonitorMe: Online video monitoring for first responders using a smartphone

Video can be a valuable source of information for monitoring first responders during operations in the field. In this paper we propose the MonitorMe, an application that supports online video monitoring of first responders. MonitorMe allows capturing video from a personal perspective, using a smartphone camera, and sending it to a remote observer. In order to reduce battery consumption and bandwidth usage, MonitorMe modulates the video frame rate according to the user activity/speed. The latter are estimated using the smartphone built-in accelerometer. The results have shown the potential of MonitorMe as a reliable non-GPS solution, which can be used for remote online monitoring of first responders in action.