At a press meet in Nokia’s worldwide headquarters in Helsinki, Finland, the company has announced that it plans to start rolling out its augmented reality tool for mobile phones next year. The US and Europe will be the first to get the new tool, called ‘Point & Find’ in early 2010, while it will be launched in India in 2011, reports The Economic Times.
Point & Find would let users point their cellphone at any real-life object and get digital information about it on their screen.
“We believe that this first Nokia Point & Find-based service for movies will add something special to the cinema experience. Simply by pointing their camera phone at a poster for a new movie, people can watch the trailer, read reviews, and find the closest cinema where it is playing,” said Philipp Schloter, General Manager, Nokia Point & Find.
The technology uses advanced real-time image processing and recognition technologies to link the user to digital content and services. It also recognises bar codes, integrates GPS positioning technology, and supports category-specific text-entry search.
So when the handset is pointed at an object, Nokia Point & Find uses a variety of the phone’s capabilities including the camera, Internet connectivity, and GPS positioning to evaluate the object. Then, by rapidly searching through a database of virtually tagged items, the system identifies the object and returns a set of links to associated content and services.
In some examples that the company highlighted, visitors to a museum could point their phone at any object on display and immediately accesses related multimedia content and invitations to special museum events. A woman on the go in the city could point her phone at a cool new car and instantly see details, find the closest dealership, or schedule a test drive.
This is just one of the many augmented reality applications that the company’s research centre is working on, the ET report says, adding that India is a priority market to roll out these services in.