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MUNICH – December 11, 2013 – In Wolfsburg, Germany through November 11 and 12, Metaio won the 2013 Volkswagen Augmented Reality Tracking Competition. Metaio competed with three other teams from countries around Europe and won overall by excelling in two of four tracking scenarios, the augmented reality company said in a press release.
Tracking, or the ability to recognize and continuously overlay or attach digital content to a real-world object as it moves through space, is perhaps the most important aspect of any augmented reality technology. Volkswagen began the Augmented Reality Tracking Competition in order to evaluate and determine the best technology available for industrial and high-precision environments. Metaio competed with universities and research firms on key criteria like accuracy, robustness and practicality.
To see augmented reality tracking in action check out Volkswagen’s MARTA project, which offers 3-D service support for the Volkswagen XL1 using augmented reality.
The Tracking Challenge consisted of an unknown environment where the participants would utilize their respective technology to find their way with a device camera with image processing algorithms and visual search engines in order to identify different features and positions in real-time and overlay them with virtual data.
The challenges of Tracking Challenge were split this year to four scenarios and dealt with the marker-less tracking under varying lighting conditions, the transfer of tracking data to new vehicles, the tracking based on virtual data and the tracking changes to the vehicle interior.
The competition was split into four individual challenges: marker-less tracking under varying lighting conditions; transfer of tracking data to new objects; virtual data tracking; and tracking changes to a vehicle’s interior. Results are below with the respective winners, with Metaio succeeding in two categories and the overall victory.
Volkswagen will renew the Augmented Reality Tracking Challenge in 2014 with a new set of objectives and scenarios. For more information about the competition, visit the Augmented Reality Tracking Challenge website.
Scenarios Metaio won:
– Tracking in various lighting conditions
– Tracking changes to a vehicle’s interior
