Sci-Fi to Sci-Fact: How Computer Vision Will Change AR and the World

Jetpacks aside, augmented reality is quickly turning many ideas from science fiction to science fact. Building on his experience having created and developed Yelp Monocle (which caught the world by surprise in its resemblance to Sci-Fi movies like the Terminator), Ben Newhouse will explore his vision for the next couple years of Augmented Reality.

Today's reality is that the limitations of (non-camera) sensors are holding back innovation. All signs point to the evolution of AR lying in cameras and computer vision. With the years of computer vision research brewing in academic labs around the world and the power provided by today's mobile phones, the year 2010 could very well turn out to be the year of computer vision on consumer devices. The constraining factor in augmented reality is no longer technical in-feasibility but one of ambition and vision.

This talk will explore the algorithms and ideas that will disrupt the hardware industry (by replacing proprietary input devices with software), the brick and mortar retail industry and many others. This talk will outline two branches of computer vision in AR: visual recognition and visual comprehension - based on the idea that if humans don't immediately recognize an object, we read written text about it to comprehend what the object is. With an understanding of state of computer vision in this framework we can more readily attack the task of building the ideas depicted in science fiction.