Have you ever wondered about the origin of an ancient building while your on a solo-tour ? Well with the new mobile technology sponsored by ESA you can get all the answers without the need for a tour-guide.

How does it work? You simply need a camera phone and internet connection, and you would be all set to go. If you see something interesting while out walking for instance, you take a photograph with your mobile phone, select the item of interest with the cursor and in real time preprocessed information on the object selected is sent to your mobile phone.

“It could be a building, a mountain, a tree, plant or a special event such as a local festival,” explain Pechtl. “The amount of information you receive depends on you, if you want to know more you just click the ‘more button’ and you trigger a more detailed search responding to your profile of interest. Applications include tourism, education, remote healthcare, security, science, etc.”

Don’t worry about the angel your taking the picture with , the system has been developed using Apollo technology, an innovative artificial intelligence system. “It’s a unique piece of software that can carry out object recognition within images, a very tricky task. It is self-learning and after a short and very simple training session it can identify any object in the world,” says Pechtl. Apollo technology can identify objects in a digital image regardless of the angle from which it is taken, the lighting conditions or quality of the image. To support object recognition, it uses navigation positioning information.

For more information , you can email ESA directly ttp @ esa.int