All is now set for the launch of Microsoft‘s first AI-powered camera for the Surface Hub 2. Users who bought into Microsoft’s Surface Hub now have the ability to upgrade their camera capabilities. The new Surface Hub 2 Smart Camera has been said to have supports for automatic reframing, a wide field of view, and image correction features that will all improve meetings.
The new Surface Hub 2 Smart Camera isn’t just any webcam, it’s Microsoft’s latest AI-powered camera that carries a lot of smarts. The 12MP camera has a 136-degree field of view has the ability to focus on anything between 0.4m and 8m. Moreover, it can focus on these different areas at the same time, and it can automatically tell who is speaking in a conference room.
Obviously, the Surface Hub 2 isn’t the first AI-powered webcam known. But these days, you find every webcam-maker trying to boast their webcam with AI features do the same things, such as background blur, face detection, and so on. Right now the huge difference here is that this is for the Surface Hub 2, and that means that it’s absolutely made for conference rooms or a huddle room ass you may wish instead of that one person in a home office type of room.
Steven Bathiche, corporate vice president of Windows and devices at Microsoft explains how “The team put tremendous work into tuning the experience to capture and frame what is occurring in the room while being smooth and natural for remote viewers or participants.” He also explains that the “Surface Hub 2 Smart Camera reframes, adjusts lighting, and enables incredibly wide angles of view, all without any warping, distortions, or depth-of-field issues that might otherwise limit what is visible.”
It also packs a teraflop of computing power on its own; after all, the Surface Hub 2S uses the same processor that was in the Surface Pro 6, so it can use the boost. This power is far more than that of the original Xbox 360. The technology giant is utilizing this power combined with an algorithm already developed that can automatically compensate for errors like distortions, tilt, and wide-angle corrections to ensure objects stay true to life. This put together, therefore, gives the Smart Camera the ability to detect everyone in a room, of all kinds of postures, lighting conditions and ensure everyone is visible when meetings are ongoing.
Reports according to The Verge says that the Surface Hub 2 Smart Camera attaches to the top of a Surface Hub 2 with a magnetic click and a USB-C mount. It’s designed for the Surface Hub 2 and will be sold separately at $799.99 or combined with the 85-inch Surface Hub 2S on May 31st for $21,999.99. That may seem like a high price to pay for what looks like a webcam, but if it’s as smart as Microsoft promises, it might be a worthwhile upgrade for businesses that have spent $9,000 or $22,000 on Surface Hub 2 devices.
