Nokia working on Augmented Reality for cell phones

The University of Southern California (USC) and Nokia's Research Center (NRC) in Hollywood have announced a research collaboration framework agreement that centers on advanced mobile user experiences. The umbrella framework agreement allows Nokia and USC to work together on multiple projects in a variety of areas and will streamline the process for commercializing USC inventions.

The first project under this agreement with USC will focus on the advancement of Augmented Reality. Augmented Reality (AR) supplements a user's view of the real world with three-dimensional computer graphic objects, providing a real-time, interactive and intuitive means of accessing and displaying spatial information. Where virtual reality immerses a user completely in an artificial world, augmented reality lets that user go about normal life, seeing the real world with additional information superimposed on it. For example, a tourist might be visiting a street in London and could see information about a pub they are walking by, or what's on sale inside the store across the street.

AR is a key technology in enabling advanced mobile user applications. In this initial project, USC and Nokia will focus on new vision-based AR tracking and content recognition techniques, adapted for use on mobile platforms.