Swedish software technology and design company The Astonishing Tribe, or TAT, has developed an augmented reality app that recognizes faces — and then pulls up that pe
This futuristic app, which runs on Android, is called Recognizr. It’s pretty straightforward — just open up the app, hit “Recognize,” point your Android-running mobile device’s camera at the face of the cute girl you’ve just met, and Recognizr will use 3D facial recognition software to match her face with her Recognizr profile. The software used to recognize faces is from photo-tagging service Polar Rose, and matches faces by creating a 3D model from the shape of the face and the contour of the eyes, nose, and chin.
Once the person is recognized, the app will pull up their associated online profiles — including Flickr, Youtube, Skype, and Facebook accounts — and can even pull off contact information if the user has chosen to associate this with their Recognizr account. When pulling up profiles, Recognizr thoughtfully takes the position of the person’s head into account — and floats icons around their face accordingly.
Rest assured that Recognizr is not as creepy as it sounds. The app will only recognize the faces of, and pull up the subsequent information for, people who have set up Recognizr accounts.
To set up an account, simply take a picture of yourself with the Recognizr app and then set your associated sites by dragging icons onto your face. You can share as little or as much as you desire, and people will only see what you choose to share (though, of course, they can always go home and Google you the old-fashioned way). Recognizr only searches through its database — it does not root through photos on the Internet — so if you don’t have a profile, nobody will see any of your information.
Recognizr premiered at the Mobile World Congress last Tuesday, and is still in development. iPhone users may also get a version of Recognizr, as the Polar Rose algorithms can run on both the iPhone and Android operating systems, according to Polar Rose CTO Jan Erik Solem.
Take a look: