One of the coolest things that doesn’t get enough press these days is augmented reality, or technology’s ability to make it appear like 3D objects exist in our space. Probably one of the best examples of this type of tech in action in a popular way is the mobile game Pokemon Go which uses augmented reality to project visions of Pokemon onto the environment in front of your screen. You can then interact with this image, among other things.
What makes Spektral’s technology so cool is that the company claims to be able to focus in on a subject in a photo and change the area around them in real time at up to 60fps. Basically this means someone can move around and interact with the generated background as if it were the natural background – an impressive feat.
DP Review cites the company’s website in its description of Spektral’s technology, quoting that the tech, “Combin[es] deep neural networks and spectral graph theory with the computing power of modern GPUs, our engine can process images and video from the camera in real-time (60 fps) directly on the device.”
What makes this all so interesting, aside from Spektral’s cool innovations in AR, is why the two companies have kept so mum about it all. Fortune reports that the company was purchased last year by Apple for $US 30 million and DP Review further cites Spektral Co-Founder and Chief Technical Officer Toke Jansen’s title as Manager of Computational Imaging at Apple as proof that this deal took place.
One thing is certain, we can expect more and more smartphone manufacturers to differentiate themselves in the optical space as the effect of adding more cameras and more powerful processors begins to wear thin. Eventually more innovative tech and optical devices that can do things radically different than the cameras of today may become the order of the morning and Apple’s strong move into AR signals this coming era.