Qualcomm Vuforia enables mobile apps to read using text recognition

USA: Qualcomm Inc. announced that its wholly-owned subsidiaries, Qualcomm Technologies Inc. and Qualcomm Austria Research Center GmbH, will enhance the Qualcomm Vuforia software platform to support real-time text recognition using smartphone and tablet cameras.

When released in the spring, Vuforia's text recognition capability will allow developers to build a new class of educational experiences that incorporate interactivity with real world objects. Additionally, developers can use Vuforia's text recognition to enable a new form of data entry in addition to on-screen keyboards and speech-to-text.

As an example of this capability, Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit educational organization behind Sesame Street, has unveiled its Big Bird's Words application as the first app built using the Vuforia text recognition feature. In the Big Bird's Words app, children are guided to search for and find new words in their environment, making vocabulary building a fun and interactive experience.

Big Bird's 'wordoscope' will enable children to use a smartphone or tablet camera as a digital eye into their real-world environments to find and identify words, bringing a deeper understanding of what these words mean by exposing children to them in familiar contexts.

"Sesame Street has a long history of using cutting-edge technology to address children's developmental needs," said Scott Chambers, senior vice president of Worldwide Media Distribution at Sesame Workshop.
"In collaboration with Qualcomm Technologies, we've developed an innovative application designed to help children build early literacy skills using the Qualcomm Vuforia platform. Early formative research on the application has received positive feedback from both parents and children. Parents viewed this app as being a unique educational experience for their child and that it would help extend learning into the real world."

Qualcomm Vuforia enables developers, creative agencies, brand, and content owners to create mobile apps that can "see" and now "read" using smartphone and tablet cameras on iOS or Android devices. Qualcomm Vuforia utilizes industry-leading computer vision technology to enable rich and reliable augmented reality experiences that drive customer engagement with print media and advertising, consumer products and packaging, and educational materials.

Vuforia is supported by a global ecosystem of more than 40,000 developers in 130 countries and has powered more than 2,500 apps for iOS and Android devices.