Image recognition connects 19th and 21st century communications
The U.K.'s Royal Mail is offering a special stamp that can be recognized by a phone app to play unique content. The Great British Railways "intelligent stamp" has a picture of a classic steam engine. When an Android or iPhone app created by Junaio recognizes the stamp via the phone's camera, a video of Bernard Cribbins reading W.H. Auden’s poem The Night Mail plays on the phone.
Tartalo robot recognizes doors from handles
Researchers at the University of Basque Country (Spain) have developed a robot that can detect doors based on their handles, even though door handles have many different forms. The robot, named Tartalo, then knocks on the door and asks for someone to open it. The project is focused on home applications for the disabled and elderly. More information is available in a Basque Research article.
Priceview Auctions to add visual search for car buying
According to a press release, Priceview Auctions is planning to introduce a site for purchasing new autos that will incorporate visual search technology. The press release references Google's recent acquisition of Like.com as an "example" of activity in the field of visual search and says that Priceview will "also partially [rely] on the new visual search technology."
MobileASL extends study on mobile video phones
According to a CNET news article, the MobileASL team is planning to launch a larger study on how deaf and hearing-impaired people in the United States use mobile video phones. The researchers are currently working on a compression scheme for sign language, with data rates at 30 kilobytes per second.
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Cornell researchers develop mobile sign language app
High speed computer vision tracks Cyborg Fly
IEEE Spectrum has a report on the Cyborg Fly project at ETH Zurich in Switzerland. A fly tethered in front of an LED display driven from a mobile robot's sensors steers that robot through an obstacle course. A high-speed vision system is used to analyze the motion of the fly's wings at 7 kilohertz; the analyzed wing dynamics provide steering commands to the robot. Although the purpose of the research was to analyze flight control in insects, the demands of the wing tracking led to the development of the high speed vision system.
