Before new camera tricks land on phones, they start here (pictures)
Have you ever wondered where the next smartphone camera feature gets developed and tested? CNET went to Qualcomm's offices in San Diego, Calif., for a look around the imaging labs.
The making of cutting-edge camera features and tools starts here, in Qualcomm's photo and imaging lab, where teams test computer vision and artificial intelligence.
Engineering vice president Serafin Diaz shows off the reference tablet that Qualcomm mocked up for testing and perfecting 3D scanning of the living room.
A bluish tint shows the scan's progress (this takes time). Meanwhile, Diaz shows how he can rotate the model within the interface. If you miss a spot, you can go back.
It isn't pretty, but you can see the mods that help make this demo work on a Qualcomm chip.
Even if a device has a Qualcomm chip to support 3D imaging like this, electronics makers will have to decide if they want to use the features in their products.
This next demo scans the space for planes, like walls and tabletops. It can then compute the volume of objects in the space, which would be ideal for a device like a robot to have, so it can interact with those objects or avoid them.
This gallery is really cool. You can find photos by attributes such as clouds, sunrises, indoor, party -- all from the device. The gallery won't waste time consulting the cloud.
The tags on this picture are easier to see: car, outdoors, no people. Well, maybe it needs a little more work. Remember, this is still a demo. The final version will tag in the background.
Converted text overlays the original handwritten note here. You can slide your finger to see both views. Imagine taking a photo of a whiteboard, then later searching through the digitized text.
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