Sony’s SmartAR tech demoed on the Xperia arc

by XB on December 5, 2011

in News,Videos,Xperia arc

Augmented Reality (AR) hasn’t taken off like many predicted, but with new devices on the horizon like the PlayStation Vita don’t write it off just yet. This will be old news to some, but Sony has developed integrated Augmented Reality which it calls SmartAR. Sony announced this around six months back, but for some reason it skipped us by. We thought it was worth a post, especially considering the recent Sony acquisition of Ericsson’s stake in SE. It shows what services and tech we may just see in future Xperia smartphones.

SmartAR works like normal AR, but it’s point of differentiation is that it captures additional information which can be displayed on a smartphone/tablet/gaming device. For example, you can use SmartAR to look at a menu in a restaurant. You can then virtually swipe through each page of this menu to see what’s on offer. The technology doesn’t need any markers either, unlike older tech which needed special markers or 2D barcodes. This is demonstrated in the video below, where an Xperia arc is used in different scenarios. The short video is well worth a watch for anyone interested in the potential practical uses of AR going forward.



Via Sony.