Related Articles
BARCELONA, Spain — Blippar, a visual discovery/augmented reality company that has worked with brands like Coca-Cola, Disney, Sony and Nike, has delivered a live demo at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that shows Google Glass delivering real-time object recognition augmented reality (AR) for the first time.
Ambarish Mitra, founder and CEO of Blippar, signaled his desire to see AR move beyond a gimmick and become a real point of engagement for consumers. Mitra also feels that wearable displays will achieve high levels of acceptance over the long-term.
So Blippar has developed a cloud-based recognition engine to do the heavy lifting for the otherwise low-powered Glass, which Mitra said has been very difficult to develop a recognition system for.
On stage, Mitra streamed his Google Glass view via Bluetooth to his Android phone to show to the room over video.
Three examples were shown. First, Mitra looked at a fashion magazine and looking at an advertisement triggered a video to play on Glass. Second, Mitra looked at a Natural History Museum flyer which triggered a 3D AR dinosaur to appear on the sheet. Finally, Mitra looked at the host on stage and triggered a splat of paint to appear on his face. The demo stream paused, but Mitra said within Glass the splat tracked to the persons face as they moved around in his field of view.
The stream over Bluetooth was very stilted, but the host and Mitra explained the view through Glass itself was delivering smooth animation and video.
The Google Glass app, called Blippar Glass, was given no timing for public availability.
