Nokia Research's MARA project

Thanks to the GigaOm, we’ve spotted an interesting research project from Nokia (NYSE: NOK). It’s the Mobile Augmented Reality Applications (MARA) project, which explores utilizing camera equipped mobile devices as platforms for sensor-based, video see-through mobile augmented reality. The project also investigates new and exciting applications enabled by this technology, and UI solutions and paradigms motivated by the restrictions of the mobile devices.

Basically, the point of the MARA project is video/photo auto tagging. The application uses an accelerometer (for orientation), a compass (for direction), and GPS (for location) to add information to the images viewed on the screen. Furthermore, the applications can recognize objects and connects to the database to identify them.

The end result could look something like this – you see a restaurant, point your phone to it and if it’s already in the database (tagged by someone else), you can get its phone number. Neat!