IQ Engines'mobile visual search technology will enable the visually impaired to access real-time information about physical objects using their mobile phone camera. The mobile phone provides a visually-driven hyperlink between the physical and digital world: point the camera at an object and get information (for example product information or navigation information). The mobile phone camera is a powerful yet underutilized tool for the visually impaired. Our proposal has two specific aims. Working directly with the visually impaired community, we will build a prototype mobile visual search application that meets their accessibility and use requirements.
Our second aim i s to improve upon the state of the art for 3D object recognition. We will investigate a novel combination of sparse image representation, feature matching algorithm, and geometric verification in order to advance the performance of 3D object matching. While state-of-the-art image intelligence is robust enough to enable rapid and accurate image search of flat feature-rich objects, current computer vision pales in comparison to the abilities of biological vision systems to recognize 3-dimensional objects. Our underlying goal is to bring inspiration from recent advances in theoretical neuroscience and apply them to image and video search solutions.
Mobile visual search, using a cell phone camera to retrieve object information, enables a mobile phone camera to become an artificial 'eye'with object recognition intelligence. Implemented on a cell phone, a mobile visual search tool can be a low cost visual aid for the blind.
