Tech Shout!

And its innovation time once again!

The researchers at York University took the phrase “two-in-one” too seriously I guess. Wondering why, read on to know that!

Experts at York University, UK have developed a new software through which your camera phone will actually double as a computer mouse. (No no, you better not think that I’m yet having my Saturday night hangover.) Coming back to it, well with this technology, camera-enabled mobile phones will be able to scroll public displays and get details on products and services such as movie and train tickets, interact with ad displays and real-estate agencies.

Just the way one rotates his/her mouse on the mouse-pad, with this technology users will be able to rotate their camera phone on the computer screen to scroll or move items.

To make use of this technology, users firstly need to place their camera phone in front of the computer screen to establish a Bluetooth connection. Once it is connected, the computer will inform the user the exact position where the handset is pointed on the screen, with the help of the reference target that is placed on the top of the normal video feed. And voila, your camera phone is ready to perform the functions of a mouse!

However, at present this technology is being referred to as simply a “prototype”. Speaking about it, Nick Pears, one of the researchers involved said, “The applications of this technology are limitless. However, at the moment the technology is still under development and multiple issues are being addressed. The image capture and image processing rate on the cell phone is quite slow, and so you can not move the cell phone as quickly as you would like to. This is what we would like to address in our next prototype.”

As of now, the prototype technology supports Symbian and Windows Mobile Operating Systems for PDAs and camera phones.

That’s all we have for you currently about this extraordinary software. Later this month, a paper on the prototype setup, will be made available at the International Conference on Computer Vision Theory and Applications in Portugal.