Why GPS won’t be enough for the AR era
Because cameras need world-scale VPS
GPS enabled mobile “killer apps” — but the future will need much more
GPS enabled many of the useful apps we use today. This includes everything from hailing your Uber to finding your next meal on Yelp or Google to checking in on Facebook. It’s been a game changer for the mobile era and propelled many apps and the platform itself to mass adoption. But GPS measurements (latitude, longitude, altitude) won’t be enough for the Augmented Reality era.
AR is about adding value to the physical world around us. To do so, our devices need to understand the world. Being even a few meters off can break the realism and usefulness of an AR experience. Imagine seeing the digital sign for Starbucks half way up the street from where it’s supposed to be. Or overloading you with information that’s contextually irrelevant.
Similar to how we humans look around to orient ourselves, future applications will rely on cameras for accurate positioning and interpretation of the local surroundings. To do this, we need a Visual Positioning System (VPS for short) that is accurate, ubiquitous, and as quick and easy as firing up your phone’s camera or, in the case of AR glasses, always on as you go through your day.
To create AR’s killer apps, we’ll need a Visual Positioning System (VPS) that is accurate, ubiquitous, and as quick and easy as firing up your phone’s camera.
VPS is like a visual GPS, but rather than a chip that receives satellite data, it’s an AI cloud service that uses visual data inputs to let cameras provide accurate positioning and contextual information. In other words, VPS lets our smartphones and camera devices “see” the world to determine its location and provide real time 3D measurements of its surroundings.
The world’s first city-scale VPS
Our mission at Sturfee is to bring people augmented abilities by enabling machines to understand local surroundings. Developing a fast, accurate and scalable VPS service is the first step in making that vision a reality.
Today we are proud to launch the world’s first city-scale VPS using cutting edge advancements in satellite imaging, deep learning, geometrical computer vision, and big data to provide on-the-ground localization and environmental awareness to cameras based on what’s seen from the sky.
We use visual data from the camera feed and, using our cloud-based spatial intelligence engine, determine (i) accurate user location, (ii) user’s orientation and gaze target, and (iii) 3D geometry of the local surroundings.
This means that a camera-connected device (smartphones and wearables for starters) can instantly receive positional and 3D understanding that can be shared with other users anytime and anywhere for realistic and social AR experiences. Like shooting robo spiders with your buddy.
StreetAR SDK Live in 11 Cities
You can tap into the power of our VPS technology through the cross-platform StreetAR SDK for Unity. It comes in three levels with increasingly robust features (level 3 is unlocked through the EAP — read on!). What else is awesome? It’s free to use for the first 10K users. We feel that this is a generous number of users for most of our dev community to add value to their apps right away. We’re happy to chat enterprise use agreements — just drop us a line at contact@sturfee.com.
We currently cover the entirety of San Francisco, Manhattan, Boston, and the downtown areas of 8 other cities. We’re working furiously to increase our coverage in the coming months, so let us know which cities you’d like us to do next.
Need some extra love? Apply to our EAP
With the SDK release, we’re also launching an exclusive Early Adopters Program. We’re looking to work closely with a few select developers and studios in the launch cities who are actively working on experiences that will take AR as a medium to the next level.
As an EAP member, you’ll get access to special closed beta features (like Level 3 powers!), receive priority support and be invited to join our Slack community as well as live webinars with our Head of Product. To apply, please fill out this 5 minute application.
Over the next few weeks, we will share in-house demos (with sample code for you ready to go!) and showcase the creative experiences made by our dev community. So stay tuned…this is just the beginning folks.
