Kees Albers, the man behind Tape My Day, reckons his product is different to all the other DVD systems that have come and gone from the amusement industry.
“I was looking for video system myself,” Albers tells Park World, “but every time I thought I had found someone they were gone. Then I found a Dutch company who had perfected the technology for the automobile and pharmaceutical industries and were looking for new applications.”
Tape My Day differs from other DVD and ride capture products by using a single camera to track multiple persons in a single space, such as a ride or attraction. Images are then split into individual videos that can be sold as part of a DVD/download of a guest’s day out.
The system works using RFID technology and tracks its subjects by identifying a piece of clothing or other unique visual cue (“We can always find something,” says Tape My Day’s Giel Sieben). Images are captured every 30th of a second and pieced together using intelligent information about probable movements to provide a high-definition moving image. Up to 100 people can be followed in a single space as large as 220 x 50 metres (11,000 square metres).
Following tests with a Dutch football club, plans are now in place to install Tape My Day at Snow Village in Saudi Arabia, a project being developed by Albers’ sister company Unlimited Snow at the Mall or Arabia in Jeddah. Because of local sensitivities, the system will only track male visitors. Integral to all installations will be the requirement to delete all unsold footage due to privacy issues.
