The app
developed by engineers in Germany gives information about any objec or food
item just by scanning it with a smartphone camera
A German
engineering firm has recently announced that it has developed an app that looks
directly inside objects and displays specific constituents. The app named
`HawkSpex mobile' will have applications across a wide range of areas and uses
the front facing camera.
One of
the case scenarios the app developers provide is how one can use the app to
find if an apple labelled organic is really organic. One can use the app to
find if the apple contains any pesticide residues.
Even
though it is not a new idea and Even though it is not a new there are several
systems that can perform such scans today, users need to use exter na l ha
rdware attachments such as a prism. That can be costly, impractical and
interferes with a smartphone's design.
“What
makes our app special is that users don't need anything for a scan other than
the camera already integrated into their smartphones,“ says Prof Udo Seiffert,
expert group manager at the engineering firm.
Generally,
these kind of scans are performed with a special hyper spectral camera. The
hyperspectral camera adjusts to a different coloured light each time and deter
mines how much of a colour's light is reflected by an object, thus generating a
complete spectral fingerprint of the object. However, the `HawkSpex mobile' app
uses a mathematical model to extract any information on an object.
Instead
of an expensive spectral camera measuring the intensity of light reflected by
different colours, the app uses the phone's display.It successively and
illuminates the object with a series of different colours for fractions of a
second.
This way,
if the display illuminates only red light on the object, the object can only
ref lect red light and the camera can only measure red light. The app's
intelligent analysis algorithms enable and compensate a smartphone's limited
computing performance as well as the limited performance of the camera and
display.
The app
is expected to be launched officially by the end of this year .
Source: THE ECONOMIC TIMES -16th February,2017
