InnoSummer 2010: One-eyed Wizard

One-eyed Wizard was a project involving high technology and high concepts. Technologies like computer vision, smart spaces and mobile streaming are all quite technically challenging, for both comprehension and execution. We worked hard to combine all these different matters into a conceivable idea and a usable mobile application.

Description

Essentially, we developed an N900 mobile application for controlling multimedia devices, and enhanced the experience by using computer vision techniques. The technology works by comparing photos and finding similarities between them. For this to work, we need a database of photos that have special information about hotspots embedded into them. These hotspots are then assigned to specific devices found on the local network, so that when we click or tap the hotspots, we can control the devices we want. When we point the hotspots with our mobile camera in the physical space, the image is compared to the database, matched with similar photos containing the hotspots, and the hotspots are then mapped to the camera image. Essentially, this makes multimedia controlling much more intuitive and straight-forward, as we can select the devices just by clicking or tapping them on the camera image.

Findings

We learned quite a bit from the project. We went through a number of computer vision technologies, while striving to preserve the software architecture comprehensible for future developers. The concept kept opening up as we dived further into the rabbit hole, and it was really not until the very last weeks that we realized the true potential of computer vision in regard to interfaces in general. With no doubt will aspects of the project rest improvable and unpolished, but then again, perfection was never the aim to begin with. We are confident that whether or not our own implementation is adopted by the developer community, the technology will surely drive the next steps of computing as we know it.