Currently, the best way to use a cell phone to find information about, for example, a product or an ad is by entering an internet search query with the keypad. Soon, however, it may be easier to simply record a video clip of an item of interest and have your REAL smart phone tell you about it instead.
Researchers at Accenture Technology Labs in France have developed technology that makes this possible using any ordinary 3G cell phone equipped with a video camera.
The prototype system, dubbed the Pocket Supercomputer, offers a simple way to seek out useful, hard-to-find information, says Fredrik Linaker who led the system's development at Accenture.
SIFTing objects
If a user records a video clip of, say, a foreign food item, the system can automatically identify ingredients that might cause an allergic reaction. Similarly, when shown a book, it can quickly perform an online price comparison, or find a review.
Live video footage is fed from the handset to a central server, which rapidly matches on-screen objects to images previously entered into a database. The server then sends find relevant information and sends it back to user.
The central server uses an algorithm called the Scale-Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) to match objects. The algorithm uses hundreds or thousands of reference points, corresponding to physical features such as edges, corners or lettering, to find a match. The process works no matter how the object is oriented, but objects must first be carefully imaged and entered into the central database.
Creating a database containing 5000 items takes about a day, Linaker says, although it then takes just a few milliseconds to match an object. "Eventually you could imagine having one enormous [general purpose] database."
Cybercast credit: YouTube
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