Augmented Reality brings the spanische BBVA Bank right into users hands.

Spanish BBVA Bank and Fraunhofer IGD study Augmented Reality (AR) with regard to novel communication strategies within this research project. Focus relies on Augmented Reality technologies and applications, that run on modern smartphones, hence reaching a broad number of users.

The challenge: AR still needs a lot of a smartphone’s resources today, like processing power. With so called Snapshot Reality we technically utilize client-server architectures and outsource intense processes to cloud systems. The application content’s are stored on a central server, making the framework modular: The user doesn’t have to download a huge application. Instead, he only receives content and information he’s interested in and those, he contextually and locally needs,

Demonstrators

Prototypes, developed during the project, demonstrate these interesting concepts: The Branchfinder aids people by comfortably and quickly finding surrounding branches and ATM. Their position is superimposed directly over the video image. Via this video see-through effect the user is visually guided the next branch nearby.

The interactive brochure extends the banking institute’s classic communication media: Whenever the user takes a photo of a billboard or a brochure the image is send to a server. The server based computer vision system recognizes the images and sends the pictures and the augmented interactive media content back to the smartphone within seconds.

Interaction

using a photo instead of a live video AR has several advantages regarding interaction and usability in this case. The user dosen’t need to point the smartphone to the point of interest the whole time. Instead, he takes the smartphone in the same comfortable position he is used to while reviewing his common photos. He easily can navigate through the interactive content. The locus of attention now lies on the resulting superimposed photos instead of trying to point the phone at the POI and to interact simultaneous.