Reality Gets Hyperlinked
ICT Results (12/31/08)

European researchers working on the MOBVIS project have successfully attached hyperlinks to pictures taken on a mobile phone, allowing mobile phone users to instantly obtain information based on their surroundings.

The hyperlinks can lead to information on the history, art, architecture, services, and context of all the features in the photograph, completely rewriting the rules for navigation, exploration, and interaction with the physical environment surrounding the user.

The MOBVIS project also has developed applications for the technology on the mobile phone. The system uses a database of geo-referenced panoramas that establish points of reference in the streetscape, and are used to match building monuments, banners, and logos.

Information relating to a building or monument can be added to the database manually, after which it can be provided to mobile phone users. The system works because of a higher-dimension, feature-matching algorithm developed at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia that can accurately detect small but important differences between similar objects by the appearance of the photo subject and the context of the streetscape. In initial tests, the system was able to reliably detect the correct building 80 percent of the time.