Cameraphone Searching - Image recognition put to good use...

This is a product that's been a long time coming, in my opinion. The components have been there for a while - phones with internet connectivity, phones with built-in cameras, and more and more robust image-recognition software - so it was only a matter of time before image-based searching came to our cellphones. It's got a lot of promise - imagine being able to snap a quick photo of anything, literally anything, and get more info on that thing instantly. Find out more about landmarks, animals and plants, products in stores, sports teams and players, anything you can see! I'll be watching to see where this goes - for now, it's being pioneered in a system called ViPR by Evolution Robotics - and the demo shots in this post show just how robust the system can be, recognizing a book at any orientation and even partially obscured. Very exciting stuff!
[via MobileWhack and Gizmodo]