Maybe we need those cameras!

[raydar at tamu.edu]

It would be neet all right for this system to work!  I wounder how far
along it is.


On Mon, 12 Apr 2004, Janina Sajka wrote:

>
>    Photo recognition software gives location
>
>    10 April 2004
>
>    from The New Scientist
> 				http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994857
>
>    For a small fee, photo recognition software on a remote server works out precisely where you are, and sends back directions that will get you to your
>    destination.
>
>    You are lost in a foreign city, you don't speak the language and you are late for your meeting. What do you do? Take out your cellphone, photograph
>    the nearest building and press send.
>
>    For a small fee, photo recognition software on a remote server works out precisely where you are, and sends back directions that will get you to your
>    destination. That, at least, is what two researchers at the University of Cambridge in the UK hope their software will one day be used for.
>
>                                                                                                                                         Photo positioning
>
>    Roberto Cipolla and Duncan Robertson have developed a program that can match a photograph of a building to a database of images. The database contains
>    a three-dimensional representation of the real-life street, so the software can work out where the user is standing to within one metre.
>
>    Line of sight
>
>    This is far better than existing systems can manage. GPS satellite positioning is accurate to 10 metres at best, and can be useless in cities where
>    tall buildings shield the user from direct line of sight with the satellites. And positioning using cellphone base stations has a precision of between
>    50 and 100 metres.
>
>    "Telling people 'You are in the vicinity of X' is no good to man nor beast," says John Craig of Cambridge Positioning Systems, a company that develops
>    software for locating mobile phones.
>
>    Unlike the GPS or cellphone base station approaches, Cipolla and Robertson's software can tell which direction you are facing. So the service can
>    launch straight into a set of directions such as "turn to your left and start walking", or give information on the building in the photograph.
>
>    When their system receives an image it begins by identifying vertical and horizontal lines. Next, it warps the image so that the horizontals are all
>    parallel with each other, and the same for verticals. This transforms the picture into one that was taken square on, rather than at an angle.
>
> --
>
> 				Janina Sajka, Director
> 				Technology Research and Development
> 				Governmental Relations Group
> 				American Foundation for the Blind (AFB)
>
> Email: janina at afb.net		Phone: (202) 408-8175
>
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