Rating: Visual search tech targets mobile app developers
Visual search and recognition specialist Cortexica Vision Systems has decided to distribute its VisualSearch API to mobile app developers for free until 1st January 2012. The company is convinced this move will find favour with developers. Controversial former head of NeoMedia and now CEO with Cortexica, Iain McCready, commented,” We’re confident that after trialling the API for free, they [developers] will want to keep using our technology in their mobile applications.”Based on the principles of the human visual cortex, VisualSearch enables any web-enabled mobile device to connect to Cortexica’s image recognition servers to determine the content of a digitally captured image.
To showcase the quality of the API, Cortexica launched two iPhone applications for wine recognition – Tesco Wine by the Case and Cortexica WINEfindr.
Following on from the success of these apps, Cortexica made the decision to open its API to other app developers.
“We want to give mobile app developers the chance to experience what we at Cortexica can really do for them,” McCready explained. “Without developers feeling under any pressure to commit straight away.”
Cortexica’s API has been designed to ‘see’ images in the same way a human eye would look at them.
Much like human visualisation, the technology automatically adapts to recognise objects and images within a wide variety of challenging conditions.
These conditions range from poorly lit, and partially obscured scenes, all the way up to reflective, small, rotated images such as car badges.
From the successful recognition of an image, any app developed with VisualSearch can then return relevant content back to the user/consumer.
The visual recognition platform captures all the different key aspects of an image and is so advanced the software can even follow the brush strokes of an oil painting.
Cortexica Visual Systems was formed back in 2008, following research by Dr Jeffrey Ng and Dr Anil Bharath at Imperial College, London. Cortexica’s HQ is still Imperial College. McCready joined as CEO back in June [2011].
The company is a member of the BizSpark *One* programme whereby Microsoft identifies a small number of high-potential start-ups.
