17 Feb 2014

Sticky Post By philippe Posted in Allgemein Permalink

The 50 finalists of the CODE_n14 Contest on CeBIT 2014

Sticky Post By philippe On 2014/02/17

The 50 finalists of the CODE_n14 Contest

Driving the data revolution

Startups from all around the globe are now shifting the evolution of big data into full gear with groundbreaking solutions for new tools and applications. CODE_n14 brings the most inspiring of these young innovators together in one spot – ready to drive the data revolution.

CODE_n14 Winner

“Big data” is a global megatrend that marks a new era in information handling. Its development is driven by three major trends:

exploding data volumes
constantly growing variety of data formats
rapidly increasing velocity of data generation and transfer
Big data enables users to store, process and analyze huge amounts of data in a highly efficient way that has not been possible until now. Its applications help companies from various industries to

gather new insights into customer behavior
generate a better basis for decision-making
reduce costs
innovate faster

In addition to the 50 CODE_n14 finalists, which will present their business solutions referring to this year’s topic “Driving the Data Revolution”, the exhibition area will feature an attractive conference program throughout the entire week of Cebit 2014. Get to know the CODE_n14 startups and their big data solutions during numerous of inspiring Fireside Chats on stage.

Also other Big Data companies apart of the 50 CODE_n14 finalists will present themselves. Companies such as BellaDati ( CEO -Marin Trigina, Agile data analytics) will be excibiting in Code_n’s hall 16 and will hopefully have the opportunity to present them selves on stage.

Further highlights include the Young IT-Day, the Google Data Dialogue, and of course the CODE_n Award Show. But have a closer look for yourself.

Energy & Environment

AutoGrid System

Redwood City, USA

Harnessing big data, predictive analytics, and cloud computing, AutoGrid System optimizes the electri- cal grid by determining power supply and demand, and then adjusting the consumption to avoid black- outs, theft, and waste.

EnergyDeck Ltd.,

London, UK

EnergyDeck is a community-based platform that helps organizations reduce costs related to energy consumption. It leverages the collective intelligence of all users in order to provide relevant bench- marks and help identify the most suitable savings opportunities.

Marinexplore Inc.

Sunnyvale, USA

Marinexplore is a big data platform that makes sense of 4-dimensional marine data. It helps to dramatically reduce environmental and economic risk associated with decision-making in the offshore and marine industries.

Placemeter

Brooklyn, USA

Placemeter gives store owners, urban planners, and residents the best insights into what happens at the places they care most about by providing real- time measurements and predictions for vehicle and pedestrian activity.

SangamTech

Herzelia, Israel

Following the vision of a “Smart City”, LeanCiti by SangamTech enables users to share any type of city-related data on resource consumption in a social network.

Finance

Big Data Scoring

Tallin, Estonia

Big Data Scoring has developed credit-scoring algorithms based on social media data to be used by banks and other lenders.

Kreditech Holding SSl GmbH

Hamburg, Germany

Kreditech uses big data and complex machine- learning algorithms to enable faster and better credit decisions.

Tresata

Charlotte, USA

Tresata offers various big data analytics engines that help companies solve massive business chal- lenges, e.g. in product pricing.

Health

Cosinuss° GmbH

Munich, Germany

Cosinuss° has developed a heart rate monitor to wear in the ear. A specially designed technology platform conveniently and continuously takes mo- bile measurements of heart rate, core body tem- perature, and oxygen levels in the blood.

GENALICE B.V.

Harderwijk, The Netherlands

GENALICE’s big data software solution combines DNA interpretation, analysis, and correlation with other diagnostic information and helps to analyze vast amounts of complex medical data more quick- ly, more reliably, and at a lower cost.

Mint Labs

Barcelona, Spain

Mint Labs offers advanced medical image analysis and visualization, providing detailed 3D maps of the brain. The solution includes tools to quantify the anomalies of the tissue captured in the images.

SOMA Analytics

London, UK

SOMA Analytics’ Kelaa technology senses an em- ployee’s stress levels based on smartphone move- ment data.

Manufacturing & Construction

Precogs

Paris, France

Precogs offers companies from the electronic manufacturing industry a predictive software solu- tion that anticipates critical supply chain risk, like a product overstock, and generates priorities for action.

Sablono

Berlin, Germany

Sablono BIMtime is the first software for construc- tion management that uses a virtual 3D building model for scheduling. It increases the level of detail for a given schedule by a factor of 1,000.

Marketing & Sales

Crayon Data Pte Ltd.

Singapore, Singapore

Following the idea that when people are given a limited range of relevant options, they are more likely to choose and will be happier with their choice, Crayon Data helps consumers and busi- nesses to make smarter decisions by simplifying big data and providing more relevant and personalized sets of choices.

Feingold Technologies GmbH

Unterföhring, Germany

Feingold Technologies provides a platform for analyzing the emotional states of users through voice and text facilities. It combines artificial intelli- gence, textual data and language-flow analysis with cutting-edge behavioral science.

G|Predictive

Norderstedt, Germany

Based on the finest in machine learning techniques, G|Predictive offers individual predictions for con- stantly recurring questions within the marketing and sales process – automated, ongoing, in real-

Iptvbeat Inc.

London, UK

Iptvbeat monitors the behavior of TV viewers and processes this data in real time, making this key information available to cable companies, broad- casters and advertisers.

Locoslab GmbH

Bonn, Germany

Locoslab offers indoor navigation for airports, fairs and shopping centers as well as location analytics to improve business processes according to the customer’s needs.

Navegg

Curitiba, Brazil

Navegg offers a proprietary technology that ana- lyzes online user behavior and determines each user’s demographics, interests, purchase intention and preferred brands, avoiding intrusive methods of traditional data collection.

Science Rockstars BV

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Science Rockstars combine behavioral science and technology in a next level marketing solution. It helps companies to optimize personalized commu- nication with their customers – online and in real- time.

Spinnakr

Mountain View, USA

Spinnakr is a next generation web analytics prod- uct. By applying the best of machine learning and predictive analytics, Spinnakr enables business owners to deal directly with data insights without having to analyze the data themselves.

Streetspotr GmbH

Nueremberg, Germany

Streetspotr is a smartphone app that connects Europe’s largest Mobile Workforce. Companies can use the crowd to obtain data and insights from any address in almost real-time.

Mobility & Transportation

Augmentation Industries GmbH

Cologne, Germany

In order to make cars smarter, Augmentation Industries has developed easy-to-install, easy-to- use hardware that enables users to extract car data like fuel status or CO2 emissions in real time.
Boxever

Dublin, Ireland

Boxever is a customer intelligence solution for the travel industry. It enables companies to leverage their online and offline customer data to create stronger, more profitable relationships.

Graphmasters

Rahden, Germany

nunav from Graphmasters is an internet-based traffic management solution for navigation devices that actively helps people avoid traffic jams.

Transmetrics OOL

Sofia, Bulgaria

Transmetrics’ predictive analytics solution enables cargo transport companies to make prognoses about their future shipping volume. The software learns from the shipping history of other transport customers and uses external forecast data.

Retail & Consumer

42 Technologies Inc.

Toronto, Canada

42 is an intuitive and dynamic predictive analytics platform for retail brands. It creates customer profiles, identifies key consumers and overall pur- chase patterns, and then translates this data into tangible, visual results.

Aentropico

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Aentropico’s DataApps supports small and medi- um-sized enterprises by providing ready-to-use reports on key business issues like customer seg- mentation and promotion planning.

Avansera Oy.

Helsinki, Finland

Avansera collects consumer shopping intentions and turns this data into real-time predictions of what consumers will buy. It allows retailers and manufacturers to react to market trends and influ- ence them significantly.

Buzzoek

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Buzzoek enables brick-and-mortar businesses to instantly create their own customer reward pro- gram by using any NFC-enabled card as a loyalty card with no need for pre-registration.

DropThought Inc.

Santa Clara, USA

DropThought is a consumer experience manage- ment solution that enables companies and retailers to get instant feedback from their clients at the point of sale.

Infinite Analytics Inc.

Cambridge, USA

Infinite Analytics has developed a personalization engine for the Web that creates an individual profile for each user based on social network data. This helps to predict user behavior and provide person- alized recommendations.

Precifica Preço Inteligente

Sao Paulo, Brazil

Precifica offers a dynamic, real-time pricing plat- form for e-commerce companies. It helps them to increase conversions and preserve their net margin at the same time.

Viewsy

London, UK

Viewsy provides analytics for offline retailers by supplying insights into customer behavior patterns, such as customer loyalty and time spent in the shop.

Technology & IT

AppScale Systems Inc.

Santa Barbara, USA

AppScale Systems’ autoscaling platform makes it easier for developers to write scalable web applications. They no longer need to worry about how many servers to purchase, how to configure them, and how to manage them.

CartoDB

Madrid, Spain

CartoDB is a geospatial database in the cloud that allows users to visualize real-time data on maps and share it over the internet.

Deltasight

Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK

Deltasight is an innovative analytics platform that aggregates and fuses data from different sources to create a central, global innovations database. It was designed specifically for R&D, business, and tech- nology transfer professionals.

elastic.io GmbH

Bonn, Germany

elastic.io is a cloud integration platform for soft- ware vendors that connects various cloud services and automates the data transfer of their customers.

iMath Research S.L.

Bellaterra, Spain

iMath Research bridges the gap between internal company data and external digital data in order to find correlations and patterns that can be trans- formed into predictive models for a better deci- sion-making strategy.

Intelie

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Intelie uses the most modern trend analysis and information correlation technologies to help busi- nesses achieve their strategic goals by avoiding possible mistakes.

MammothDB

Sofia, Bulgaria

MammothDB is an inexpensive and enterprise- ready alternative to traditional data warehouse and business analytics solutions,leveraging the power of Hadoop, yet maintaining the benefits of SQL.

mapegy UG

Berlin, Germany

mapegy provides companies with a compass to navigate the world of high-tech solutions – it keeps new technologies on the radar to help companies make better strategic decisions, showing them ex- actly which innovations are ideal for leveraging their R&D resources.

Massive Analytic Ltd.

London, UK

Massive Analytic enables organizations to optimally access, compress, transfer, analyze, and store data – for faster and more effective decision-making.

OpenDataSoft

Paris, France

OpenDataSoft is a cloud-based platform designed for seamless and unlimited data re-use, making it easy to publish and share data online.

Radoop LLC

Budapest, Hungary

Radoop is a fully graphical tool with an easy-to-use interface supporting the whole range of big data analytics, from ETL and ad-hoc reporting to predic- tive analytics.

Real Impact Analytics

Luxembourg, Luxembourg

As an alternative to cash, Real Impact Analytics has developed a mobile money service for poor regions in Africa based on telecommunications data usage.

SQream Technologies

Ramat Gan, Israel

SQream Technologies uses graphics processors to capture, store, and process big data within seconds – users get data insights 100 times faster than usual.

Swan Insights

Brussels, Belgium

With Swan Insights B2B companies get a 360-degree view of their clients. A smart database solution combines information of individuals’ profiles from the social web with the corporate Big Data analysis.

SynerScope

Eindhoven, The Netherlands

SynerScope makes data analysis easy for anyone by replacing complex queries with visual representa- tions – a fast and agile software solution for more efficient interactions.

25 Jan 2014

Sticky Post By philippe Posted in Big Data Companies, Big Data Experts, Conference Permalink

DLD14 – What’s Next After Cloud Meets Big Data

Sticky Post By philippe On 2014/01/25

Cloud and Big Data – what’s next?! A discussion panel with JP Rangaswami (Chief Scientist, Salesforce.com), Florian Leibert (Founder, Mesosphere), Jean Paul Schmetz (Chief Scientist, Hubert Burda Media), Werner Vogels (CTO, amazon), Aditya Agarwal (Vice President of Engineering, Dropbox), and Sonali De Rycker (Partner, Accel Partners).

What people wants? It’s simplicity and convenience, JP said. Adoption of Cloud was driven by convenience not by economics. The change came from people. If they are able to use things easily it’s successful.

Werner nods and adds that we’re not only have and had to transform the business, we have to transform IT – this is all powered by the cloud. Companies can now move much faster than ever before. The Cloud is a step of revolution for him.
The biggest issue, especially in Germany, is security. Who has access and how save is the data? But customers are saying security improved when they moved to cloud, is Werner’s experience.

“Cloud unleashed the power of entrepreneurship low costs for starting companies”

The cloud made it easier to set up software things and security is today no problem. Trusting Google, Dropbox or other services isn’t such a big thing, but who knows what will happen in 15 years? It’s not just for fun companies move to cloud, it should be biz reason (ROI).

“Analog commoditization stays. Digital commodities change…You still need to innovate and adapt.” (JP Rangaswami)
But what’s the future?

It’s not the hardware you will make money on. It’s not the software anymore. But it’s rather the software. It’s a long process of reinvention to become a customer-centered company. And security…

“If we assume most of critical data will reside in a cloud then code should move where the data is.”

Critical data is being stored in the cloud – data that is worth protecting! If someone breaks into your house you do not need more laws, you need a better lock, says Werner – that’s what we try to do. So, in 3-5 years everything will be encrypted. A huge industry might appear.

14 Dez 2013

Sticky Post By philippe Posted in Big Data Experts Permalink

Big Data and the Rise of Augmented Intelligence: Sean Gourley at TEDxA

Sticky Post By philippe On 2013/12/14

Dr. Sean Gourley is the founder and CTO of Quid. He is a Physicist by training and has studied the mathematical patterns of war and terrorism. This research has taken him all over the world from the Pentagon, to the United Nations and Iraq. Previously, Sean worked at NASA on self-repairing nano-circuits and is a two-time New Zealand track and field champion. Sean is now based in San Francisco where he is building tools to augment human intelligence.

Description of Talk:
Each year computers are getting faster, but at the same time we as humans are getting better at using them. The top chess players in the world are not humans OR computers, but combinations of humans AND computers. In this talk, Sean Gourley examines this world of augmented intelligence and shows how our understanding of the human brain is shaping the way we visualize and interact with big data. Gourley argues that the world we are living in is too complex for any single human mind to understand and that we need to team up with machines to make better decisions.

http://seangourley.com/
http://quid.com/

http://www.tedxauckland.com/

05 Dez 2013

Sticky Post By philippe Posted in Allgemein, Study Permalink

Datenexplosion in der Unternehmen IT.

Sticky Post By philippe On 2013/12/05

Eine Studie wie Big Data das Business und die IT verändert

Datenexplosion in der Unternehmens – IT from BT Let's Talk

Datenexplosion in der Unternehmens – IT from BT Let’s Talk

22 Nov 2013

Sticky Post By philippe Posted in Big Data Companies Permalink

How Big Data Will Ease Your Commute

Sticky Post By philippe On 2013/11/22

City of Lyon

IBM is testing the new traffic-management technology in a pilot program in Lyon, France, that’s designed to provide the city’s transportation engineers with “real-time decision support” so they can proactively reduce congestion. Called Decision Support System Optimizer (DSSO), the technology uses IBM’s Data Expansion Algorithm to combine old and new data to predict future traffic flow. Over time the system “learns” from successful outcomes to fine-tune future recommendations.

07 Aug 2013

Sticky Post By philippe Posted in Big Data Experts Permalink

“Finding Truth & Beauty in Data” — Moritz Stefaner at European Communication Summit 2013

Sticky Post By philippe On 2013/08/07

“Finding Truth & Beauty in Data” — Moritz Stefaner at European Communication Summit 2013 from Moritz Stefaner on Vimeo.

In this keynote talk from the European Communication Summit (communication-summit.eu), Moritz Stefaner reports from his practice as a »truth and beauty operator«, shedding light on workflow and design rationale behind his latest data visualization projects. His work ranges from clean, effective information design over interactive, exploratory visualizations to aesthetic data artworks. You will get a glimpse into today’s possibilities in data visualization, and learn how data visualization can become an effective tool for communication and learning in today’s information rich world.

10 Jul 2013

Sticky Post By philippe Posted in Big Data Companies, Blog, Maps Permalink

HERE, a Nokia business is empowering Esri with real-time traffic information

Sticky Post By philippe On 2013/07/10

NOKIA and Esri a market leader in Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping software are colaborating since a while. In the past Esri was using NAVTEQ to provide traffic data for example for the ArcGIS Transportation Analytics software. On July 8th 2013 HERE, a Nokia business announced that it is bringing its real-time traffic information to Esri. HERE, is NOKIA’s brand for their unified location offering.

ArcGIS for Transportation Analytics is a tool for optimal enterprise fleet operations. It is made to create vehicle routes, manage complex schedules, and monitor progress throughout the day.

Crucial for the performance of ArcGIS for Transportation Analytics software is the quality of real-time traffic information. This is where HERE could contribute substantially in augmenting Esri’s solutions. HERE is delivering real-time traffic information based on the data it gathers from a wealth of sources, including the world’s largest compilation of both commercial and consumer probe data, the world’s largest fixed proprietary sensor network, event-based data collected from government and commercial sources, and billions of historical traffic records.

ArcGIS for Transportation Analytics software is not just providing real-time traffic data but also several layers of other data sets such as weather.

Being capable to handle even more data layers Esri and SAP concluded a cooperation. Esri’s ArcGIS spatial data analysis product will be integrated with SAP HANA and BusinessObjects, adding geographic content to apps in the business-intelligence suite and allowing data to be represented in maps and graphics. Employees in the field will also get access to geospatial and business data through SAP’s Mobile Platform.

ArcGIS for Transportation Analytics software is an interesting tool. But, with the integration of HERE it can increase significantly its effectiveness:

ArcGIS for Transportation Analytics technical work shop with Lynn LaMott and Jeff Rogers

Roy Kolstad, Vice President for Mobile, Web and Enterprise in North America at HERE. “Our traffic offering will complement HERE map content, which Esri has been using for a decade. Through this combination of traffic and map content, Esri will be able to provide a richer location-based analytics offering that will help businesses make more informed decisions.” See more at: http://press.nokia.com/2013/07/08/here-brings-real-time-traffic-to-esris-global-platform/#sthash.0HWg7Ac2.dpuf

“Traffic data is the single most important telematics application,” said Roger C. Lanctot, Associate Director in the Global Automotive Practice for Strategy Analytics. “Whether for fleets or consumers, traffic data is essential to determining the fastest or most efficient route and HERE’s expanding relationships on the enterprise side are significant. Traffic information is core to maximizing uptime and essential for alternative fuel vehicles such as EVs.” – See more at: http://press.nokia.com/2013/07/08/here-brings-real-time-traffic-to-esris-global-platform/#sthash.0HWg7Ac2.dpuf

See also: http://www.zdnet.com/sap-plots-link-up-with-esri-to-add-geo-data-to-sap-hana-7000017817/

About HERE and Nokia
HERE, a Nokia business, is offering the first location cloud that delivers people the world’s best maps and location experiences across more screens and operating systems unified under the HERE brand. To learn more about HERE, visit http://blog.here.com

Nokia is a global leader in mobile communications whose products have become an integral part of the lives of people around the world. Every day, more than 1.3 billion people use their Nokia to capture and share experiences, access information, find their way or simply to speak to one another. Nokia’s technological and design innovations have made its brand one of the most recognized in the world. For more information, visit http://www.nokia.com/about-nokia.

About Esri
Since 1969, Esri has been giving customers around the world the power to think and plan geographically. The market leader in GIS technology, Esri software is used in more than 300,000 organizations worldwide including each of the 200 largest cities in the United States, most national governments, more than two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies, and more than 7,000 colleges and universities. Esri applications, running on more than one million desktops and thousands of Web and enterprise servers, provide the backbone for the world’s mapping and spatial analysis. Esri is the only vendor that provides complete technical solutions for desktop, mobile, server, and Internet platforms. Visit us at esri.com/news.

- See more at: http://press.nokia.com/2013/07/08/here-brings-real-time-traffic-to-esris-global-platform/#sthash.0HWg7Ac2.dpuf

03 Jul 2013

Sticky Post By philippe Posted in Entrepreneur, Start-up, Technology Permalink

Untaped Data from the Sky: Skybox Imaging

Sticky Post By philippe On 2013/07/03

Skybox Imaging wants to provide real-time satellite images form earth and data analytics to build a Google-scale business.

Big Data companies scour the Internet and transaction records and other online sources to glean insight into consumer behavior and economic production around the world, an almost entirely untapped source of data—information that companies and governments sometimes try to keep secret—is hanging in the air right above us.

There are 1,000 satellites orbiting the planet at any given time, But only 12 send back hi-res images.

Of the 1,000 or more satellites orbiting the planet at any given time, there are perhaps 100 that send back visual data. Only 12 of those send back high-resolution pictures (defined as an image in which each pixel represents a square meter or less of ground), and only nine of the 12 sell into the commercial space-based imaging market, currently estimated at $2.3 billion a year.

Even with six small satellites orbiting Earth, Skybox could provide practically real-time images of the same spot twice a day at a fraction of the current cost.

Plenty of people would want real-time access to that data—investors, environmentalists, activists, journalists—and no one currently has it, with the exception of certain nodes of the US government.

Skybox wants to go further than just providing real-time images. The company’s real payoff won’t be in the images Skybox sells. Instead, it will derive from the massive trove of unsold images that flow through its system every day—images that, when analyzed by computer vision or by low-paid humans, can be transmogrified into extremely useful, desirable, and valuable data. What kinds of data?

The number of cars in the parking lot of every Walmart in America.
The number of fuel tankers on the roads of the three fastest-growing economic zones in China.
The size of the slag heaps outside the largest gold mines in southern Africa.
The rate at which the wattage along key stretches of the Ganges River is growing brighter.

Continue reading:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/06/startup-skybox/

Skybox Imaging:

SkySat-1 in final testing at Skybox’s HQ

Skybox Imaging is an information and analytics company that provides easy access to reliable and frequent high-resolution imagery and first-ever HD video of the earth by combining the power of web technologies and a constellation of microsatellites. By operating the world’s first coordinated high-resolution imaging constellation, Skybox aims to empower commercial and government customers to make more informed, data-driven decisions that will improve the profitability of companies and the welfare of societies around the world.

Through a planned constellation of 24+ satellites that will capture high-resolution imagery and the first ever HD-video of any spot on earth, multiple times per day, Skybox will be able to take the pulse of the planet on a near real-time basis to provide an indispensable tool in addressing global challenges in areas including security, humanitarian efforts, and environmental monitoring.

Stanford Technology Venture Program

featuring Co-Founders of Skybox Imaging:

Dan Berkenstock (EVP and Chief Product Officer | Founder)

Julian Mann (Vice President, Product Development | Founder)

John Fenwick (Vice President, Flight Programs | Founder)

Ching-Yu Hu (Director of Marketing and Customer Relations | Founder)

http://www.skyboximaging.com/

17 Mai 2013

Sticky Post By philippe Posted in Digital Innovation, Investments, Start-up Permalink

Mercedes-Benz needs Big Data solutions to be ahead in connected car technologies

Sticky Post By philippe On 2013/05/17

Mercedes-Benz, Bosch and HDI have partnered up with European accelerator network Startupbootcamp to access ideas in the fields of connectivity, mobility and big data.

As part of this partnership, called SBC2go, the partners will provide financial resources, mentors and marketing support to startups selected to participate in the programme.

Dr. Frank Spennemann from Daimler lab and Mercedes-Benz says partnering with Startupbootcamp Berlin will “accelerate our access to innovation and will plug us into an impressive community of alumni, mentors and investors. At the same time we support start-ups in developing business ideas and increase their market value. Due to our global presence we can open doors to new markets.”

So, what is Mercedes-Benz, Bosh and HDI looking for?

E.g. Daimler has a number of initiatives already such as the Car2Go car-sharing service which has over 7,000 vehicles in 18 cities on the road in Europe and North America

They need basic, advanced and realtime data anlytics. How basic traffic data analytics can look like, can already be seen at uber.com

Here are San Francisco’s location networks, showing the probability that a ride starts in one neighborhood and ends in another.

Having this kind of analytics in realtime, car sharing service car2go could offer e.g. dynamic pricing. This would mean an competitve advantge to DriveNow (BMW), flinkster (Deutsche Bahn) and ZebraMobil.

It is great to see that Mercedes-Benz, Bosch and HDI are supporting the Berlin start-up ecosystem. The output of this partnership will be definitely interesting.

Links:

http://www.startupbootcamp.org/blog/the-big-league-startupbootcamp-berlin-partners-up-with-mercedes-benz-hdi-and-bosch-for-sbc2go.html

http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/16/mercedes-benz-bosch-and-hdi-create-new-accelerator-with-startupbootcamp-berlin/

http://blog.uber.com/2012/01/09/uberdata-san-franciscomics/

18 Apr 2013

Sticky Post By philippe Posted in Technology Permalink

Fujitsu is getting the real and virtual world a bit closer together

Sticky Post By philippe On 2013/04/18

Fujitsu Laboratories has developed a technology that can overlay an interactive touchscreen over real-world objects, such as paper.

This would mean an easier handling of non digital data like books.

Using a low-resolution webcam (just 320 x 180 pixel resolution) and a commercial projector, the Japanese company is able to project an interface onto a surface, and then use the camera to track both the shape of the item as well as your fingers to determine what to do. For example, in the video demo from DigInfoNews, the Fujitsu rep is able to digitally crop out just the photo on the printed piece of paper by sliding the sheet under the device, and using only his finger to manipulate the interface projected onto the paper.

Fujitsu said:

“We think paper and many other objects could be manipulated by touching them, as with a touchscreen. This system doesn’t use any special hardware; it consists of just a device like an ordinary webcam, plus a commercial projector. Its capabilities are achieved by image processing technology.”

Besides flat surfaces, the technology also works on curved or uneven ones, so one can easily manipulate data from a book.

The fully commercial version of the technology will be ready for release in 2014.

All posts by philippe