SBIR Phase I: Realtime Markerless Scene Tracking on a Smartphone

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will determine the feasibility of robust, markerless, real-time tracking of a scene on a Smartphone for use in Mixed Reality (MR) applications. The problem to be solved is the expense and complexity of MR systems, thereby enabling the mass market adoption of MR applications. Existing high-end MR solutions require specialized equipment and custom hardware. Such equipment is expensive and not widely available. Existing Smartphone MR applications are inexpensive, but rely on fiduciary markers or known targets from which a Natural Feature Tracking training data set has previously been created. This imposes significant constraints on the deployment of MR applications: the location must be prepared in advance; or the consumer must change their behavior i.e. they must obtain a printed marker and bring it with them whenever they intend to use the MR application. The proposed innovation eliminates these challenges by using commodity hardware (a Smartphone) and markerless tracking. It enables solutions that are affordable, flexible and ideal for broad market adoption. High-end MR solutions are expensive and competing Smartphone offerings rely on the use of markers or pre-trained data sets. These restrictions present a clear barrier to mass market adoption. The proposed approach eliminates these obstacles, enabling broad adoption of MR applications. There is significant potential for commercialization of the innovation as a component of an MR application.