A friend of mine, who is a Chicago Public School teacher, told me that after Christmas break, kids could not stop talking about their gifts. The most popular gift kids get nowadays: Tablets. I completely understand as these devices are much more versatile than regular toys. Qualcomm and Sesame Street are planning to use this fascination to test a new version of Qualcomm’s Vuforia platform, and they hope to help kids improve their literacy skills in the process.
This collaboration has produced a prototype of an augmented reality game called Big Bird’s Words, where kids use their tablet or smartphone camera as a “wordscope” to match words from the game to words they can find in their environment. Hopefully, kids will use the app to learn a deeper understanding of words as they begin to put them into environmental context. This app will be released in the summer of 2013 and be supported by iOS and Android devices.
Vuforia works by recognizing “target objects” which are kept in databases. These databases can be included in app downloads and can be updated for new feature. A Vuforia cloud database is also available for apps that must recognize large amounts of images and require constant updates. A Vuforia Web account is needed to access the cloud database that will most likely include fees.
The software is able to recognize images on printed paper, user defined images like pictures, posters etc. and can it recognize information of simple 3D objects like product labeling on the face of a box. Big Bird’s Words is the first app to use Vuforia’s new text recognition capabilities. The software can even recognize target objects that are partially obscured. Future apps using text recognition could be used to translate text to different languages, act as a virtual tour guide, help manufacturers or retailers organize and manage merchandise and the possibilities are practically endless.
The new version of the SDK will be released in the spring. It supports Xcode including OpenGL and HTML5 for iOS apps. An Eclipse version for compatibility with most Android devices is also offered and if you want to develop for both iOS and Android, there is a version compatible with Unity 3D, which now supports Unity Editor’s Play Mode for development and debugging in real time using your computer’s webcam.
Qualcomm and Sesame Street are showing off their new app and software at CES 2013.
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