Sony introduces a couple of weeks ago a new AR or Augmented Reality technology SmartAR, and after being able to enjoy Sony’s stunning demonstration at at the Sony Building (Video here after) I could not stop wanting to know more about it.

Luckily for me, the nice folks over at Sony was kind enough to organize a small private session with the Engineers and researchers behind SmartAR giving us the chance to know the very basic of this technology directly from the mouth of one of the lead researcher who worked on it.

So what’s SmartAR? SmartAR is in fact the child or shall say extension of years of research and development coming straight from Sony’s Robotic Department. During the past ten years Sony worked on many different aspects of Robotics and one of them was the capacity for a Robot to be able to visualize its position in a 3D world. These findings on such research are in the core of Sony’s AR Program with CyberCode and are now part of Sony new SmartAR technology.

Smart AR is based on three major features with MarkerLess Tracking, where SmartAR capable devices will be able to lock on any kind of objects without the needs of any QR like code, Speed and 3D Technology. While today’s presentation from Masaki FUKUCHI-San will only focus on the MarkerLess Tracking features, we have to remember that SmartAR has been developed to interact heavily with Internet content where most of the data that will comes to your smartphone or gaming device will be pulled from the cloud.

It is also very important to stress that SmartAR has been developed for two main usages including basic AR Needs that are already available right now, but also for gaming! And if unfortunately none could comment on this during our interview, I personally believe that SmartAR will most probably come in Sony’s future gaming console (PS Vita?) and Future tablets (S1 S2?)

Finally, and despite being technically possible, SmartAR will ONLY be available on Android devices for now. But as you have seen on Sony’s Official Video, SmartAR is nothing like you can imagine and will bring another “reality” to our world like never before, so stay tune for a better AR World with Sony!

YouTube embedded Version