Australian Researchers Develop X-ray Vision Mobile Phone Software

A team of researchers working at the University of South Australia have built a mobile application allowing you to 'virtually' see through buildings and see what's behind them.

More recently known as 'augmented reality', the application works by overlaying computer graphics on top of real-world video images, with lead director of the program, Dr Christian Sandor, mentioning the apps bring the real and virtual worlds together. “More and more applications use high-quality 3D models, such as Google Earth, or photos, such as Google Streetview, of the environment. But with these approaches the real and virtual worlds are disconnected,” he said. “Our new applications present the real and virtual worlds together. For example, with Meltvision, you can ‘melt’ away a building in front of you to see whether or not there is an ATM in the street behind it." The team working with Dr Sandor have made three different applications using different technologies, namely 'Meltvision’, ‘Distortvision’ and ‘X-ray Vision’, to provide their experience. Meltvision works by 'melting away' objects in front of the users camera in order to show the location which they wish to get to or see, whilst X-ray Vision does a similar thing, only presenting it transparently so the user can see through buildings. Distortvision meanwhile (as shown in video above), changes images from the recorded video footage so that objects not in the line of sight can be moved back into it. So far the applications only work on Nokia devices, thanks mainly due to the teams partnership with the company. The group, working under the name of Magic Vision Lab, have filed patents for the above technology.