SREngine Lite for iPhone 3G & 3GS

Seinichi Kanemura shows us once again, how one man can make a difference.  While it might be difficult at first to understand what his SREngine Lite product is doing in the video, if you pay close attention at the 1:50 mark, you’ll see part of it.

The iPhone takes a picture of a restaurant menu, then the engine embedes pictures of the items from the menu into the picture (I’m assuming using object/word recognition): roasted chestnuts, mulled wine, and hot chocolate. 

While much of the details are lost in translation about his new product.  This section from his website did offer some insight.

Advantages of SREngine Lite

1. We do not need a marker, there is no need to print the posters and extra marker.

2. We do not use the sensor, there is no need to worry about the sensor error.

3. The only devices, it is not necessary to have a big server and it works lightweight and agile.

4. Can reduce costs.

The direction of the product, SDK and a license as a software engine that AR will be provided to the project.  Release date at this stage is unknown. 

Sein explains on another post that “the final goal of the SREngine project is to provide AR-based social networking service.” 

So based on what we’ve seen from previous videos, the camera, using pattern matching, can identify scenes (posters in the videos).  Then the user can put information in about the particular scene (restaurant, location, etc) for others to access.  The SR Engine can even identify scenes from angles so the user doesn’t have to be in the same spot the picture was taken.  

His SREngine seems to have been nominated for the NCM2009 awards, but I couldn’t grasp any more details from the translations. 

Once again, Sein’s progress with his SREngine is impressive and I’m sure his product will become an important part of the AR landscape soon.