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Qualcomm gives up on its augmented reality business
There's a renewed excitement around Augmented Reality (AR), driven largely by Microsoft's HoloLens headset. Not everyone is so enthused, though, most notably Qualcomm, which is selling its AR business to the Internet of Things (IoT) company PTC for an undisclosed sum. The unfortunately named Vuforia is a platform and SDK for developers and partners to build AR experiences from. It's been running for five years and has seen use in projects like a miniaturized TARDIS, a Sesame Street app and, most recently, Mini's weird and wonderful driving goggles.
Sesame Street hits CES with augmented reality app for kids, we go hands-on (video)
At this year's CES, Qualcomm's got a big show -- but not all of it has to do with bleeding-edge performance and kick-awesome graphics. In fact, the San Diego company has a bit of a family side. It's partnering with Sesame Street to highlight its Vuforia platform, an Augmented Reality-based SDK that gives developers handy tools to make the most out of their apps. The program on display, called Big Bird's Words, is a word recognition tool to help children learn vocabulary. As you'll see in the video below, Big Bird himself lets the young 'uns choose a word and, using the rear camera, hunt around for it in a real-world environment. If the camera picks up an incorrect word, Big Bird indicates that you need to keep looking. Since this is just one application on the platform, this particular concept could be used for a plethora of different types of apps, such as dictionaries and translation programs. %Gallery-175380% Joseph Volpe contributed to this report.
Mini TARDIS really is bigger on the inside, thanks to augmented reality (video)
Once in a while we'd come across some cool DIY projects inspired by Doctor Who, the world's longest-running sci-fi TV show, but nothing beats this little TARDIS that would actually make you gasp out the classic line: "It's bigger on the inside!" Greg Kumparak, a former writer of sister site TechCrunch, initially built nothing more than just a convincing model of the iconic blue police box (with a functioning light at the top) by hand, but soon afterwards he wanted to somehow give it an interior as well. By utilizing the Blender 3D creation suite (which was a first for Kumparak), Unity 3D engine and Qualcomm's Vuforia AR SDK, the result is an Android app that renders the 3D interior atop the random wave-like pattern -- visible once the door's removed -- on the TARDIS in real time (no pun intended). Once you've seen the demo video after the break, you'd probably agree that Kumparak's only one sonic screwdriver away from becoming an honorary Time Lord. For more detail on how and why this project was put together, head over to Kumparak's blog post.
