News

Archives

Recent

AMA, Inc. Awarded NIH Research Project

September 2005 - Applied Media Analysis, Inc. was awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project to provide a software based vision enhancer for the visually impaired. Given the importance and high cost of healthcare for the visually impaired, particularly elderly adults, applications of technology that provide visual enhancement are especially valuable. For this project, AMA demonstrated the technical feasibility of MobileEyes, a software based add-on suite which uses existing camera enabled PDA or cell phone hardware to provide enhanced electronic imaging capabilities. The system provides video based magnification and contrast enhancement, with specialized enhancement for text making it easily read by low vision users. The system is also configurable to account for the specific needs of the given user. The technical contributions of this project focused on text enhancement since an inability to read directly impacts daily activities such as shopping, preparing meals, taking medication, or even using household appliances.

AMA, Inc. Awarded IBARS Project Phase II

September 2005- After successfully completing IBARS Project Phase I, Applied Media Analysis, Inc (AMA) was awarded Phase II. Based on the previous concept of using available mobile devices to link the physical world to information networks, AMA’s proposed mobile symbol recognition technology from Phase I enabled many opportunities for mobile e-commerce by recognizing bar codes, text on documents, and user-customizable icons that carry and convey information. Our concept remains powerful in that it requires no new infrastructure, since it uses popular mobile devices, and existing symbols such as barcode tags, text, and user-customizable icons. Once completed, our downloadable symbol recognition component will enable many functions including sales, order-fulfillment, targeted information-delivery, etc. For our customer and partner base, service-providers, OEMs, merchants, advertisers, and information providers are apt canidates.

Combined with our Phase III partner, Nokia’s Mobile Commerce Solutions, our cross-platform symbol recognition technology is well positioned to capture a nontrivial portion of this large mobile market, and make significant contributions to the US economy. Finally, we are also seeking to use our technology to help disadvantaged groups (handicapped or visually impaired, for example) get access to product information (prescription drug instructions, for example) or transact commerce activity conveniently, using a device they may already have, or that is easily acquired. These include applications in medical care delivery, military applications, sign recognition for the visually challenged, and others.

AMA, Inc. Awarded IBARS Project

January 2004-Applied Media Analysis, Inc. (AMA) was recently awarded an NSF SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) Phase I project. This project sought to leverage the convergence of processing and sensor technologies in widely available camera-equipped cellular telephones in order to develop e-commerce applications centered on the acquisition and recognition of barcode images. Modern handheld devices present a convergence of many technologies in a handy package, including networking, voice, cameras, processing, location-sensing and displays. However, small-size and long battery-life requirements lead to limited processing power, limited-resolution cameras, and varying available network bandwidth on such handheld devices. To make our concept feasible, improvements were needed in the algorithms performing computer-vision, image-processing, and pattern-recognition, so that they were both computationally efficient and small enough to fit in the memory of consumer devices. Challenges AMA overcame included being able to unwarp images to account for distortions due to perspective imaging, warping of the substrate, or non-flat surfaces. The image needed to be processed to account for imaging limitiations such as non-uniform lighting, blurring, and highlights. The recognition algorithms in the system were created to be able to recognize many symbologies, make use of extra information available in images to tackle degradations, and be efficient and small. Phase I research tackled these issues and demonstrated project feasibility. The technology developed under this SBIR initiative will facilitate the development of numerous applications where by users can get and communicate information through coded symbologies in many domains. Specialized applications, such as the use of coding on advertisements, direct integration of mobile-information and mobile-commerce, tracking of dietary restrictions, or product contents from UPC codes, are just a few of the possible uses for this technology.

AMA, Inc. Awarded MATES Project Phase II

November 2004-After successfully completing the MATEs Project Phase I, Applied Media Analysis, Inc (AMA) was awarded Phase II. The Phase I effort was comprised of three top-level objectives, all of which have been completed and demonstrated key capabilities. For the first objective, AMA gathered data and developed, demonstrated, and evaluated a set of algorithms for the detection, recognition, and translation of road signs from images captured by a PDA. Next, AMA established a software architecture to support the processing, including detection, recognition and translation of signs in various domains, and created an interface for configuring the system, providing feedback to the user, visualizing results and integrating with other applications. AMA implemented their analysis algorithms in all of these areas. And finally, AMA fostered existing collaboration, established new partnerships and is developing a detailed plan for transitioning the technology into the commercial sector.

Phase II of the project will build upon the successes of Phase I and move toward full deployment of a downloadable software module for the commercial market by the end of Phase II. AMA will continue to develop a specific configuration and to address needs of the government sponsors and the soldiers that will use the system. Phase II technical objectives are: to realize the full technical development of our expanded system, achieve commercial product usability, and develop a comprehensive technology transition plan, fostering existing commercial interests, and promoting new ones.

AMA, Inc. Awarded MATES Project

January 2003 - Applied Media Analysis, Inc. has been awarded a Phase I SBIR (Small Business Innovative Research) from the Army Research Laboratory. Our mission was to develop a sign understanding and translation system called MATES (Multilingual Automatic Translation Engine for Signs) that can be operated by a novice user to obtain and interpret signs in foreign languages. The system, once completed, will be comprised of a hand-held Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) and camera along with an embedded component architecture and software developed for text detection, recognition and translation, and a configuration and visualization interface to aid personnel deployed in foreign countries. Although the initial phase of this project will focus on the immediate need for road sign translation, an architecture will be set up to allow a range of domain knowledge modules to be loaded for translations of other types of signs, including posters, public announcements, and documents left by adversaries, as well as more general text content found on menus, in bus schedules, or with instructions.

Our text detection and recognition approach builds upon our previous Research and Development to provide a lightweight, trainable, and robust solution which can be easily adapted to different foreign languages. Our novelty lies on the use of context for both recognition and translation/transliteration. In order to deal with uncertainty in OCR and in the translation of sign content, we rely heavily on contextual information and optional feedback provided by the user of the system, combined with robust techniques for indexing and incorporating domain information. The general philosophy will be to provide a system where additional context and resources will be supported by dynamic configuration. The component architecture supports a view such that different resources and software components can be loaded on demand.

The benefit of the development of an autonomous sign translation system has tremendous commercial potential. For example:

    • Assisting visitors to foreign countries that are unable to read local language
    • Sign detection and recognition can be integrated into systems for the visually impaired
    • Sign recognitions module can be used in numerous applications including automated mapping, robot navigation, and driver support systems

AMA, Inc. teams with Perceptek Robotics of Littleton, Colorado

March 2002- Applied Media Analysis, Inc. has entered into a partnership with Perceptek Robotics of Littleton, Colorado to develop sign recognition capabilities for autonomous vehicles and driver assisted systems. Under the support of a DARPA Phase I SBIR (Small Business Innovative Research), we will build upon previous Research and Development of both companies to provide a real-time architecture for detecting, tracking, and recognizing signs from dynamic video imagery. Our approach detects signs by combining visual cues consisting of color, shape, and text. Signs are tracked to improve detection accuracy and provide resiliency to occlusions and environmental effects. The orientation of the sign is determined and the imagery rectified for recognition processing. Text and graphics characters are extracted using a combination of optical character recognition and syntactic/semantic parsing. Feedback loops are provided to resolve ambiguities, improve recognition rates, and reduce false detections. Our Phase I program will result in thorough testing of the algorithms and an end-to-end feasibility demonstration.