Giordano Pezzola
Computer Science Engineer
Giordano Pezzola
Master Thesis in Computer Science engineering
The company I'm working for assigned me the task of developing two Google Glass applications in the context of a research and development project called ARCADIA 3.0
target: improving the visiting experience of the tourists exploring the "colle palatino" and the site management using Google Glass.
Research + Development + On-site Testing = 1604 hours (200 working days)
User position and what the user is looking at are determined through the SURF image recognition algorithm from the OpenCV library.
120 seconds
Sampling frequency 200Hz
target: we have to avoid taking pictures while the user is walking/moving.
problem: no native support for step detection on Google Glass.
solution: development of an algorithm monitoring the data coming from the accelerometer sensor integrated on the device.
key point: a variation of accelerations which persists in time for a good part of the temporal observation window provides a good “suggestion” to suppose several subsequent steps, therefore we can assume that the user is walking.
Using a moving average allows us to ignore noise due to head motions and generated by single steps.
target: taking photos to be used in the image recognition process without requiring user interaction while keeping the screen off.
problem: Android allows to take pictures only if the user is able to see the preview and the photo is saved after the user gives a grant.
solution: building a camera management logic crafted for our purposes, designing and developing a dedicate local Android Service implementing a workaround to imposed limitations.
The workaround consists in generating a dummy surface, called SurfaceTexture, on which we send the picture preview instead of showing it on the display. Using this dummy texture, we can invoke the startPreview() method (that enables camera preview) which is mandatory to call the takePicture() method that allows to take and store pictures.
Both the apps were demonstrated to Lazio Innova which is the co-financer of the ARCADIA 3.0 project.
We had a one-day on-site demo session with the responsible for the restoration of the Palatino.
Both the apps were verified and approved by NSR a third party certification company.
We had a one-day on-site demo with the director of "sovrintendenza capitolina ai beni culturali", who tested the apps appreciating the innovative aspects and their functionalities.
Google Inc. has retired the prototypal version that we have today and it is currently working on a new version of Google Glass that will be mainly intended for business uses.
The redesigned glasses have a larger glass prism, 5GHz Wi-Fi, a faster Intel Atom processor and are waterproof.
By Giordano Pezzola