msmobiles.com - Cellular News - FotoNav : Positioning System (Locator) for Camera Phones but without GPS

FotoNav : Positioning System (Locator) for Camera Phones but without GPS
October 16, 2004;
Many users of camera phones, when visiting foreign cities, are asking themselves a question: "where I am?". Answer to this question by now was impossible without GPS. But thanks to software that can recognize landmarks and tell you where you are it is possible!

German "Institute of Photogrammetry Bonn" has developed software that makes it possible to recognize your location on the basis of picture that camera takes!

At this moment this software works in this way that picture taken with camera phone is sent to the server, and this server is analyzing it (image recognition) and then sending back to the camera phone a map, with indication where user of given camera phone is located! Ideally such software would run exclusively in camera phone, without network connections, but realistically it would require big storage and big processing power in a cell phone...

The name of this system is "FotoNav" and to learn more about it click here.

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