Pechtl and Geiger, co-owners of the Germany-based SuperWise Technologies AG developed the Apollo image-recognition system which is also known to be a part of the Eye phone. The Eye Phone uses satellite technology and guides through various tourist spots.
The Eye Phone system uses object recognition done by the Apollo software, the software recognizes objects from images; and it identifies any object in the world. To use this technology the tourist needs to click a snap with their mobile camera and the information about that particular object or tourist location will be sent back on real time basis to the phone using internet services.
Pechtyl says “the Apollo software is basically ready, and there is already one camera available with what we need: GPS, angle-sensor and on-board processing power. All we have to do is to integrate our system with the camera, i.e. load our software on the camera chip, to have a prototype ready and working.”
This tourist’s phone proto-type is all set to launch by mid-2008, the specifications or pricing information of the Eye Phone is not yet available.