Innovative Technologies: Video Analytics

Now let us look at some of these intriguing questions that just might catch your fancy:

• What if you could hold your smartphone to the sky and see how the weather will change during the day?
• What if your phone could recognize trams passing by and tell you whether you could use it to go back home and/or when the next one is coming?
• What if you could see which of the Burj-Khalifa – or any other hotel –rooms that are available, and their price, only by taking a picture of the building itself?
• What if you could see when a museum is open and what are its current exhibitions and opening hours?

Thanks to video analytics, augmented reality is on the way to become part of our habits. But what is it? Augmented reality is a type of virtual reality that aims to duplicate the world's environment in a computer. An augmented reality system generates a composite view for the user that is the combination of the real scene viewed by the user and a virtual scene generated by the computer that augments the scene with additional information. The virtual scene generated by the computer is designed to enhance the user's sensory perception of the virtual world they are seeing or interacting with.

Since over a year now, we have been hearing a lot about this innovative technology and more particularly about the google glass and how it will revolutionize the way we see and interact with our surroundings. Everyday we can witness new applications that are bringing us closer to this this revolution.

With this idea in mind, and a constant development in the field of augmented reality has led to birth of applications like Layar and Blippar, which focuses on apps that are developed for smartphones, giving consumers a more interactive look into the world AR.

I'm sure you all aware of the Google glasses as mentioned before. But for augmented reality, it is just the tip of the iceberg for the future it holds for this technology.

A lot of retailers have already leveraged on this concept of AR incorporating into their sales and marketing operations, allowing consumers to take full advantage in helping them choose their product. Augmented reality is changing the way of how consumers can interact and shop at the same time. An example of this is illustrated in the IKEA 2013 catalogue video below:

The Nespresso Case:
Another similar example would be in the case of Nespresso machines.The concept is quite simple, the customer had to print a qr code, put it on a desired location, download the Nespresso app that would use the smartphone camera to reproduce the machine on the screen. The customer could then change color to check which one would better fit its environment.
This allows the potential customers to picture how well the Nespresso machines would fit their homes.

The Automotive Case:
HUD or Head-Up-Display is the use of any transparent display that displays information data without users' requiring to look away from their usual point of view. BMW was the first car manufacturer to adopt this technology into their commercial vehicles, where by the information on speed and other vehicle information was displayed on the bottom of the windscreen allowing the drivers to a more efficient and safer driving experience. It makes the drivers more aware of the car comportment and soon will be able to inform him from potential dangers using cameras at the back of the car reported on the windscreen. The cameras, together with infra-red light, will be able to analyze potential threat and communicate them to the driver, this latter won't even have to change its field of vision and will be able to concentrate only on what is in front of him!

Links:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57588128-76/the-next-big-thing-in-tech-augmented-reality/
http://mashable.com/2012/12/19/augmented-reality-city/
http://www.koloss.se/project/nespresso-augmented-reality
http://www.bmw.com/com/en/insights/technology/technology_guide/articles/head_up_display.html