This camera defends your home with AI and paintballs

© PaintCam

Forget banal surveillance cameras and shrill alarms, PaintCam Eve is a real UFO in the field of deterrence. This intelligent system uses motion detection and facial recognition to identify unwanted visitors and give them a very… impactful welcome. This camera, created by the Slovenian company OZ-IT, is capable of actively defending your home using paintball pellets, or even tear gas.

An extremely dissuasive way of encouraging an individual who is a little too confident to leave the premises quickly in the event of an intrusion.

Active surveillance and deterrence by force

Unlike traditional surveillance devices, PaintCam Eve stands out for its ability to take physical action in the event of a perceived threat. At the heart of this system lies “EVA”, a sophisticated artificial intelligence capable of analyzing in real time the images captured by high-definition cameras in order to identify known faces and allow certain people to move freely.

As the company's promotional video (a bit ridiculous, it must be said) points out, Eve, the system's artificial intelligence, doesn't just set off an alarm or trigger an alarm. send a notification to your smartphone. If the intrusion is confirmed, it emits clear verbal warnings through its loudspeakers, offering the intruder a last chance to leave the premises. For example, the intruder who receives the warning has 5 seconds to leave. If this measure fails, Eve then springs into action.

The system fires volleys of non-lethal projectiles, such as paintballs or tear gas on the recalcitrant individual. A rather radical approach.

Subscribe to Lemon Squeezer

Control and customization

Everything is controlled through an app, allowing users to take orders manually, ensuring an additional level of flexibility and responsiveness. In the promotional video, a father can be seen intervening remotely to stop Eve from throwing marbles at his daughter's boyfriend after she waved her hands in front of the camera. Rather reassuring in the event of a problem.

As the official site explains, not without humor: “ If an unfamiliar face appears next to someone familiar — perhaps your daughter's new boyfriend — PaintCam will follow your instructions .” This feature allows users to set specific rules for Eve's interactions, taking into account complex family and social situations.

However, it is important to emphasize that facial recognition technology in general, on which the system is partly based, is not without faults. Problems with authenticating individuals, racial biases and other errors have already been noted in the past by other systems, as highlighted in this article from Popular Science.

Security or overreaction ?

The PaintCam Eve project may seem promising and will necessarily please absolute security fans who are working hard to make their home an inviolable place. However, it does not fail to raise significant ethical and security concerns. What would happen if Eve reacted excessively or incorrectly? We can easily imagine her unleashing her blast on unknown children in the neighborhood or a poor Amazon delivery person dropping off a package.

Facial recognition errors, intrinsically linked to the system, could lead to unfortunate or even tragic incidents. Even though the projectiles are non-lethal, they could still cause serious injury. A paintball gun can easily shoot paintballs with a kinetic energy of around 10 to 15 joules. Nothing says that Eve will be able to shoot with such force (the official site is extremely stingy with information), but nothing says the opposite either.

The use of tear gas can also cause quite serious problems: eye damage, respiratory problems, in particular on elderly people or those suffering from asthma.

OZ-IT will launch its project on Kickstarter on April 23< /strong>, it remains to be seen whether enough people will be interested in their rather radical approach to home security. After all, maybe a simple, easy-barking Labrador just as effective and technologically safer as this armed-to-the-teeth camera.