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Qualcomm’s Vuforia extends image recognition to the cloud

Categories: Augmented Reality
By: , IntoMobile
Saturday, June 30th, 2012 at 2:28 AM
Qualcomm's Vuforia extends image recognition to the cloud

Qualcomm’s augmented reality platform Vuforia just got smarter thanks to the power of the cloud. Up until this point, Vuforia apps have performed image recognition against a local database of up to 80 images and after this change, recognition will be possible against databases containing more than one million images. This new feature will enable new mobile commerce experiences that will benefit a number of parties, including consumers, developers, brand marketers and retailers.

As an end-user, you will simply point your smartphone at products and/or signage to get immediate access to product information and reviews, and even make purchases online for items not available in stores. To show how this works in real-life, Qualcomm has teamed-up with American Apparel to demonstrate the potential of the technology.

Blippar, which is one of the first mobile AR marketing platforms to integrate Vuforia (and which we’ve covered in the past), has been conducting trials of cloud-based recognition to meet the needs of brands worldwide. The new feature is now available in private beta and developers can make requests to participate from this page.

All said, we’re sure this isn’t the last time we’re talking about Vuforia…

About The Author

Dusan Belic

Dusan has been using smartphones since their introduction and is now following the latest trends in the industry. The "convergence" is what he's most excited about, and writing about it is the next logical thing to do. He thinks that using a smartphone is what everyone who cares about their time should do. In addition to his interests in mobile phones, Dusan also loves to experiment with the latest web and mobile 2.0 services. The idea of accessing and managing your information from any device no matter where you are simply amazes him. Whether it's an online to-do list, note taking service or a video sharing social network, he's there to try it out. He admits though, he's still searching for the ultimate web-based organizational tool, which "sings" perfectly with the mobile PIM application. Dusan used to run SymbianWatch.com which later became part of IntoMobile. He lives in Serbia, South-East Europe, from where he edits the site on a daily basis.

  • Thomas Wrobel

    Quite a lot of AR apps now are doing imageurl association – I really hope they can get together and define a standard protocol for associations, else we are going to be left in a sitation like the early web, with some things only visible by some browsers.
    If AR is to flourish its GUI and features that need to be areas of competition – not content.