Innovation is our regular column in which we highlight emerging technologies and predict where they may lead
Call it advertisement hacking. Technology-inspired artists have designed ways for you to mask or perhaps even delete company logos in your field of view as you wander around a city or shopping centre.
The trend subverts a technology called augmented reality (AR), by which virtual information 鈥� say restaurant ratings 鈥� is overlain on the real world as you peer through smart glasses or a smartphone camera.
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New York artist has designed a program called , which detects corporate logos in a video stream, then replaces them. The software uses a computer-vision system, normally used in robotics, to learn to recognise logos at different angles and in varied lighting. His current prototype overlays a logo with a photo of that company鈥檚 CEO.
The project is still under development and does not yet run in real time, but Crouse鈥檚 goal is to produce a video filter for removing logos from, say, home movies.
Worrying acceptance
Another project, called 鈥溾��, augments ads in a visual display with works of art. It鈥檚 a pair of binoculars containing a camera, a display, and a processor running image-processing software. 鈥淲e鈥檙e so used to seeing these billboards in our cities, that we鈥檝e almost come to accept that it鈥檚 kind of a natural state, and I think that鈥檚 something to worry about,鈥� the project鈥檚 designer , an artist based in Berlin, Germany, meeting in June.
Another New York-based artist, Mark Skwarek, is using AR to make a political point about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The Leak in your Home Town is a smartphone app that overlays an animation of a leaking oil pipe over BP logos in gas stations or on billboards.
His project website describes it as a kind of benign graffiti: 鈥淭his repurposing of corporate icons will offer future artists and activists a powerful means of expression which will be easily accessible to the masses and at the same time will be safe and non-destructive.鈥�
Diminished reality
Jan Herling at the University of Technology in Ilmenau, Germany, has taken such visual augmentation a step further, with software that deletes objects altogether from a video feed. It鈥檚 not specifically for deleting logos, but it鈥檚 easy to see how it could be applied in that way. In , a Mercedes logo is removed from a vehicle鈥檚 hubcap.
Peering through a tablet computer鈥檚 camera, a user selects an object to remove 鈥� a stapler on a desk, say 鈥� and Herling鈥檚 software removes it, in real time, from the tablet display. It works by removing the selected object, then intelligently enhancing frames back to 鈥渘ormal鈥� by filling in removed space. Herling calls it 鈥渄iminished reality鈥�. 鈥淲e think that there are thousands of applications,鈥� he says.
Read previous Innovation columns: Online army turns the tide on automation, What鈥檚 the right path for indoor satnav?, TV networks to become social networks, CERN collides with a patent reality, Sunrise boulevards could bring clean power, Hand-held controls move out of sight, Mobile malware develops a money bug, Reinventing urban wind power, Mastering the art of 3D film-making,A real live Grand Prix in your living room, Google may know your desires before you do, Shrewd search engines know what you want, The tech refresher Russia鈥檚 spies needed.
