The "Marmota mobile AR" prototype developed by FBK researchers, allows you to frame a landscape with your mobile phone and overlay information such as mountain-names/distance/altitudes into reality.

(v.l.) Simply point your mobile towards the landscape that you are looking at, and a few moments later you will see all the information you desire, such as the profiles of the mountains and the names of peaks/refuges, together with their distances away and  altitudes. A dream for those who find themselves in a more or less unknown location and want to know everything about the scene around them.

The "Marmota mobile AR" prototype developed by Claudio Andreatta, Michele Zanin and Paul Chippendale, researchers at the “Technologies of Vision” Unit (TeV) in the Information Technology Centre of Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK) in Trento, is already up and running and being field-tested at the Trento research centre for further improvements.  

 "The system", explains Michele Zanin "integrates technologies and findings from different disciplines, spanning cartography to computer graphics, and sophisticated machine vision algorithms. Each pixel of the image is associated with information such as altitude, latitude, longitude and distance from the observer”. This works using a minimal amount of memory and the user's location (obtained via internal GPS) is sent via the Internet to a central "Marmota" server - currently hosted at FBK - where the data is processed. When the user's information is ready, it is packed (usually 50-120 Kb) and sent to the user who then receives a high resolution, 360 degree augmented overlay layer. In accordance to priority rules, the augmented layer will specify tailored information, such as county names and altitudes.
"One of the innovative aspects of the system," continues Zanin "is that the rendering provided to the user shows aspects that are only 'actually' visible from the observation point, and excludes hidden ones that would create confusion. The system also offers the user information on points far from the eye, up to 500 km away, and functions throughout the world between 60° latitude North to 60° South. The system can also draw vectorial data of any kind into the scene such as roads, hiking paths, rivers or lakes, taking into consideration the actual visibility from the user’s view point". AR applications are amongst the most downloaded by owners of new generation mobile phones. This Android-based prototype  represents the mobile version of the  "Marmota" technology, a project under development by the TeV research unit since 2007, aimed at correlating geo-referenced landscape photos with synthetic three-dimensional models. "User Testing" says Zanin "will follow in the immediate future and will involve volunteers from outside FBK and will hopefully identify critical points in the system, thus helping us to transform the current 'prototype' into an application that can be enjoyed by the general public”.

For further information:
- Website of the TeV Research Unit in FBK headed by Stefano Messelodi: http://tev.fbk.eu/
- Websites of the “Marmota” project: http://tev.fbk.eu/marmota , http://tev.fbk.eu/marmota/blog
- See the  spotlight of the “Marmota”project, by Marzia Lucianer (Communication Unit FBK): http://www.fbk.eu/it/node/682
- Press room: http://www.fbk.eu/press