Evolution Robotics’ “visual pattern recognition technology” (VIPR) also is used by Mobot, that I previously wrote about. And, it was first seen in Sony’s Aibo robot dog, that isn’t produced any more.
According to PC Magazine:
“ViPR instantly transforms moving and photographic images into simple patterns (they look like sketchy line drawings) that can be easily matched against similar patterns.“ER company officials told us that it can even recognize live objects, but there are currently no mobile applications or services to take advantage of this.
“According to a release from Evolution Robotics, consumers can point their camera phones at virtually any printed (in magazines, posters, and catalogs) image of a product, take a picture and the camera will grab a pattern and match it a growing database of product patterns and images on a remote server.
“That server will match the ID up with product information, pricing and more and deliver it back to the cell phone.”
NTT phone needed
The only way to access the Bandai network is with a 3G FOMA N902iS phone from NTT DoCoMo.
However, Mobot already has provided image recognition of advertisements in the United States, as I’ve written.
Microsoft camera phone search
While I’m on the subject of camera phone imaging technologies….I should have posted this last month when I first saw it.
From the ResourceShelf I learned about research at Microsoft — Photo2Search — about searching the Web by taking photos with a camera phone.
Xing Xie, a researcher in the Web Search and Mining group in Microsoft Research Asia in Beijing, says in a Microsoft news release, “This technology aims to solve the problem of mapping a physical-world object to a digital-world object.”
Photo as search tool
He says, “You see an object in the physical world, and you want to know the corresponding information in the digital world — for example, its price on the Web, user comments, or Web sites. There are many different solutions.
“You can use a bar code or radio-frequency identification. But using a picture of the object is very convenient and very easy to deploy.”
The research is, well, still research and not ready for commercial deployment but the possibilities are interesting. “The coolest things is that you can use a pure image as a query, with not text,” Xie says. “That is a totally new search experience.”
This is one more reason why I’m so bullish on wireless imaging. It’s a powerful tool and the opportunities for new services are significant.
One “boo”
Before I conclude, I’d like to say “boo” to Evolution Robotics. In order to view some demos on the Web site I had to provide contact information as well as my company’s revenues in order to receive a password.
Contact information is one thing, but there’s no reason Evolution Robotics should need revenue data. I did complete the form but lied, on principle, about the revenues.
However, no password was forthcoming. The message said I would be contacted. I received the password a while later.
Hi,
Hopefully, the mobot or photosearch service will be launched in India too!
Posted by: Prashant Koli | Sunday, May 14, 2006 at 02:52 PM