Although we have little more information, it appears IBM has announced a very interesting program for Wimbledon this year.  It’s called Seer Android Beta, and it’s an Augmented Reality app.  The app acts as a real-time guide and interactive map of the 2009 tournament allowing selected users to see what others can’t, as well as providing up to the second scores.  The IBM Press release says:

The Seer Android Beta is an innovative application being trialled at Wimbledon 2009, that takes a live video feed from the handset’s camera, and superimposes content and data associated with various points of interest into that video stream.

From tennis to food courts, points of interest throughout the Wimbledon grounds have been plotted using GPS. By making use of the T-Mobile G1’s digital compass and precise GPS coordinates, the application offers a ‘heads up display’ to show the user what they are looking at. It augments this with other live data from the scoring systems and IBM scouts reporting from around the grounds, to give the user a comprehensive and dynamic insight into their surroundings. For instance, pointing the camera lens towards a court will not only identify the court number, but also display details about the current and subsequent matches.

Seer Android Beta users can also use the phones’ Map view, which pinpoints their location on a detailed map of the grounds, and can be used as a way finder. The Timeline view is an aggregation of news feeds and updates from IBM scouts, and allows users to see in real-time what is happening around the site. And a handy ‘Radar’ function indicates the user’s current position and nearby points of interest within range.

Although IBM have stated: “A limited number of T-Mobile G1 handsets running the Seer Android application will be supplied by T-Mobile and will be made available to key media and VIP guests of IBM at Wimbledon 2009.”, we can also confirm that it looks like you will be able to download the app from the Android Market from Monday (Search for IBMSeer).  The use of the compass and GPS to augment the camera view by overlaying additional data (including data from twitter it would appear) is fascinating, and in essence shows us where other solutions such as Google StreetView could head in years to come.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 19th, 2009 at 10:17 am and is filed under Gadgets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.