companies

Imprivata, a company that provides secure login and authentication systems, has announced a new product that locks a workstation when a user walks away and automatically re-authenticates the user when he or she returns. The product, called OneSign Secure Walk-Away, uses computer vision to identify users and determine their presence.

Xilinx Inc revealed their Industrial Imaging Targeted Design Platform for applications such as high-resolution digital video conferencing, video surveillance, and machine vision systems. The platform has a Xilinx Spartan-6 FPGA, and includes several reference designs. More information is available in a press release.

Franklin Electronic Publishers is marketing a camera-based paper money reader for the visually impaired. In the United States, all bills are the same size regardless of denomination, making it difficult for the blind to securely engage in cash transactions. The handheld Franklin device uses technology from Evolution Robotics to recognize individual bills; the amount is spoken out loud by the device.

Lior Ron, Google Senior Product Manager, will be presenting a talk entitled "Looking into Google Goggles" at the O’Reilly Where 2.0 Conference on March 31, 2010 in San Jose, CA. Google Goggles is a visual search application for Android mobile phones. According to the conference program, "this talk will dive into how they [Google] made it happen and what the computer is actually seeing".

Swedish company The Amazing Tribe (TAT) has developed an Android smart phone app, called Recognizr, that identifies a person when the phone's camera is pointed at them. Using face recognition software developed by another Swedish company, Polar Rose, the augmented reality app displays information about the person superimposed near the image of that person. Only users who have opted into the system and provided a face image and profile are identified by the system.

Adobe Photoshop is celebrating its 20th anniversary with the release of an interesting video with the creators of Photoshop discussing the evolution of the product. The discussion in the video mentions Photoshop’s filters and plugins that enable special image effects.

A spacecraft docking system developed by the European Space Agency (ESA) for the International Space Station (ISS) is now being used by Volkswagen to assemble cars. Reference points on the car are recognized by a camera and used to guide a robotic arm to install a module on the car. The system allows the robot to match its speed to the car so that installation can be done while the car is in motion. More information is available in an theengineer.co.uk article.

In an interview, Marc Raibert, founder of Boston Dynamics, provided more details about the LS3 robot. Boston Dynamics is known for its BigDog invention, a four legged robot that could navigate over rough terrain (click here for the YouTube video).

VTT, a contract research organization in Finland, has developed a fast method of image analysis to detect Alzheimer's disease in MR brain scans. Previous MR image assessment methods took from 15 minutes to several hours; the new method takes three minutes. The segmentation method, which uses expectation maximization (E-M) and graph cuts, automatically calculates the volume of the Hippocampus. More information is available in a press release and a Neuroimage article.

ModiFace Inc. has recently announced its AgeTell application that can visually simulate the effects of aging on user photos. According to the press release, the technology can be used for entertainment as well as professional purposes, such as forensics use by the FBI and police.