companies

According to a press release, Priceview Auctions is planning to introduce a site for purchasing new autos that will incorporate visual search technology. The press release references Google's recent acquisition of Like.com as an "example" of activity in the field of visual search and says that Priceview will "also partially [rely] on the new visual search technology."

Techcrunch reported today that Kooaba, a Swiss image recognition company, has secured approximately US$3 million in a new round of venture capital. The startup, headed by Herbert Bay, is a spin-off from the ETH Zurich Computer Vision Lab. The funding will be used to hire new staff, expand partnerships, and enter new countries.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a watchdog group for digital privacy issues, has issued a statement condemning Apple's exploration of what EFF calls "traitorware." According to the EFF statement, Apple has filed a patent application on technology that would allow Apple to take pictures of an iPhone user without the knowledge of the user and send them back to Apple.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Japan's NTT DoCoMo is launching a new augmented reality service on its smartphones. Dubbed "chokkan nabi" (or intuitive navigation), the service will enable users to view points of interest using a camera enabled phone. Japan's KDDI also has similar services that identify landmarks and scan barcodes.

The buzz in the computer vision world today is that Google may acquire Like.com, an e-commerce startup with technology for shopping by image recognition, for US$100 million. For more info, see Michael Arrington's article on TechCrunch.

Anybots, a Silicon Valley startup, is building telepresence robots that allow users to be virtually present in different locations using remotely controlled robots. The robots stand 5 feet 6 inches (1.67m) tall, and contain a video camera, still camera, and microphone. The company is promoting the concept of a robot-infused workplace. More information is available in a CNN interview. Videos are available from the Anybots video webpage.

According to The Register, Paul Hawkins, the inventor of Hawk-Eye ball spotting technology, has written to football's governing body FIFA proposing that Hawk Eye be deployed in future soccer matches. According to Hawkins, the technology could also assist referees in detecting offsides, and could report the results to referees within half a second. The system, which uses multiple video cameras, ball detection, false-alarm rejection methods, and triangulation, has already been used in tennis, cricket, and snooker.

Hawk-Eye used in a tennis match:

According to Fishbowl NY, the fashion magazine Marie Claire has contracted Pongr to provide image recognition technology for interactivity with the print edition. Users can take a picture of a magazine page with their phone and email the image to a website. When the image is recognized, additional content relating to the magazine picture is sent to the user. Pongr's technology was selected because it does not require running an app on the phone.

Intel recently showed the Home Exploring Robotic Butler (HERB) robot at its research day event. HERB was able to hand bottles to people as well as retrieve them for recycling in a bin. The robot sits on a Segway base with twin arms to manipulate objects. Users can use a iPhone app to tell HERB what to do.

More information is available in a Wired web article and the following YouTube video.

Image Metrics, which sells computer vision enabled facial animation services and technology, announced that it has acquired FacePro, which makes lip synchronization technology. Image Metrics plans to integrate FacePro's technology for synchronizing lip movements to speech in order to provide a single source facial animation solution for video game developers. According to the press release, "The combined technology solution enables facial animation as low as $12 per second."