Snap2Tell gives information about your location

Leonard Goh | Jun 17, 2009

Snap2Tell in action. (Credit: Leonard Goh/CNET Asia)

If you've ever been on a free-and-easy holiday and want to know more about the area you're in, what do you do? Looking for brochures near the tourist center is a possibility, but in the near future you may be able to take a picture of it with your camera-phone and have the information delivered to your handset.

The Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*Star) demonstrated its Snap2Tell, an image recognition system, at the CommunicAsia 2009 tradeshow held at the Singapore Expo. To use it, just activate the application, take a picture, and send it on to the system's server. It will return with the relevant information.

Is Snap2Tell able to differentiate between the Tokyo Tower and Eiffel Tower? Chris Wiranto, senior research officer for the Computer Vision and Image Understanding Department, said the software can be tweaked to work with GPS-enabled mobile phones so the server can detect the location of the user and send the correct data.

For now, Snap2Tell relies on MMS technology, but A*Star is considering connectivity options such as Wi-Fi and 3G. Currently, the server has only limited information, but the agency is considering opening up the platform so users can contribute pictures and information to the database as well.

A*Star is targeting the tourism sector with Snap2Tell, and maybe in the not-so-far future, tourists visiting Singapore can simply turn to their mobile phone as their tour guide.

Filed under: Future Tech
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