Interview de Octavio Good CEO at Quest Visual
Why use augmented reality to translate
Augmented reality combined with real-time video is a great user experience. It also improves the translation quality over a solution that uses still images because it can take multiple samples and the user can adjust the camera angle to get it to work better.
How did you get the idea?
The idea for the translator came when I was in a bookstore in Frankfurt and I couldn't read the covers. I'm a computer graphics programmer, so I thought I'd try to do an OCR solution. It was only when I hooked up video so I could debug images faster that the application got really exciting. It turns out video was useful for more than just debugging.
What is the technology used?
The technology used is all custom C++ and assembly language code. There were no libraries used except for the iPhone user interface elements.
Will you expand to other languages?
Yes, we will expand to other languages as soon as we can. That is one of our highest priorities.