Andy Sjostrom
08-15-2002, 10:00 AM
Meet the <a href="http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,425903,00.asp">InfoScope Translator</a>! Here's the idea: Use your Pocket PC to shoot a picture of a sign (text) in any language. Send the picture wirelessly to a translation server. The translation server automatically starts a recognition process and sends the translation back to you!<br /><br />If this is not cool, then I don't what is! Guess who is working on the project! IBM, of course! The engineering powerhouse. Wonder who will eventually take it to market and sell it...!<br /><br />"The prototype, which the researchers describe as an information augmentation system, uses a Casiopedia Pocket PC with an attached Casio digital camera. You capture an image—a sign for a restaurant, for instance—on the screen and then select a bounding box to indicate where the text is. Since the Pocket PC doesn't have enough power to process the image, a wireless connection sends the image to a server where software converts the image into black and white. Optical character recognition (OCR) software, developed in conjunction with IBM China, is run on the text, and translation software converts the text into your language. The prototype can translate four languages into English: Chinese, French, German, and Italian (not yet Greek). Eventually, the InfoScope may even translate menus."