Managing logical camera devices

Abstract

Techniques for managing logical camera devices are provided. A system for managing logical camera devices may instantiate logical camera devices having different responsibilities. A first logical camera device may receive and pass image data and metadata to a first application that may perform operations using both the image data and the metadata. A second logical camera device may receive and pass the metadata without the image data to a second application that may perform operations using the metadata but not the image data, thereby preserving power, memory, and/or processor resources that may have unnecessarily been used to provide the image data (e.g., via a buffer stream) to the second application, which may have deleted the image data upon receiving it. Another logical camera device may be instantiated to control other logical camera devices.