wikitude_drive

“Wikitude Drive was the result and it serves as a fully-functional, light weight navigational system which overlays point-to-point directions on a camera-view, without the need for maps. In addition it provides users with Wikipedia information pertaining to the site you’re looking at. Mobilizy GmbH reveals a preview of it’s augmented reality navigation system, the first fully functional mobile AR navigation system available for the Android platform.”

“Mobilizy’s Wikitude, an augmented reality app that overlays Wikipedia links onto your camera’s viewfinder, is still one of the most amazing apps in the Android Market. Wikitude Drive, which does the same with turn-by-turn directions, does it one better”

Mobilizy, which I’m not going to even attempt to pronounce, is the Austrian based startup responsible for Wikitude, arguably the first augmented reality application to ever grace smartphones. Today they’re launching something that finally makes augmented reality, which most mobile fanbois seem to think is going to be the next holy grail, and actually make it useful by using it as a navigation system for your automobile. It’s called Wikitude Drive.

“Augmented reality is predicted to become a multibillion-dollar industry within five years, writes John Davidson.”

Wikitude Drive from Austrian-based developers Mobilizy, is, at its core, a GPS navigation app. What makes the app stand out, however, is that instead of a map, you just see a real-time view of the street ahead of you and the navigation data is shown on top of this video. Wikitude Drive is currently under development and will run on Android phones. According to Mobilizy, the app will offer all the standard GPS navigation features drivers have become accustomed to. In addition, though, the company also plans to offer “social navigational features” that, for example, will help users find their friends’ location.

“Austrian startup, Mobilizy, released a navigation system today as an experiment to see if augmented reality can work with driving directions.”

“The idea of using augmented reality, which superimposes data and information over the real world in a viewfinder, in navigation isn’t new. The military has long used it to guide fighter pilots and identify targets, but GPS-enabled smartphones with accelerometers have finally made commercial applications feasible.”