Visualizer App Wins Major Technology Prize

We are visionaries, dreamers, software engineers & cyberpunks, working together to create something wonderful.

For over two decades, we have been dreaming about an incredible new medium. One that has the potential to transcend the most vivid of imaginations; and fundamentally change the way we work, play and interact with our world.

But when we started planning our endeavour, we found that the technologies necessary to bring our visions to life, were not suitable or powerful enough.

So we’ve been quietly inventing new ones.

We are deep in R&D and busy developing our product, so we’re not quite ready to show the world yet.

But

we’ll let you know

when we are.

As we travel along our journey, our computer vision R&D is also helping companies and their customers achieve things they could never do before.

Like visualising paint colours on their walls, live on their mobile device.

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Back in 2011, we released a mobile augmented reality SDK. We wanted to empower developers so they too, could explore this emerging medium.

As we built it from the ground up for mobile, it was very fast and used very little memory. So there was more room for creative content.

It made us happy to see people making cool stuff with our technology.

It was also used by some of the most recognisable brands on earth.

And we learned a lot by making cool things for them too.

But we’ve decided to discontinue our SDK.

Other companies are doing a fine job of that now. And we need to focus…

…on building something wonderful.

OK. Let me know.

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AkzoNobel’s pioneering Visualizer app wins major technology prize

12th November 2014

The pioneering Visualizer app launched by AkzoNobel’s Decorative Paints business earlier this year has won a prestigious honor at the 2014 UK IT Industry Awards.

A world first in augmented reality technology, the free app enables users to see in real time what a room will look like in a wide range of different colors – before any paint is applied to the wall. The innovation beat seven other finalists in the Innovative Mobile App of the Year category.

“Color has the power to change people’s lives and we’re delighted to have been recognized for an innovation which is designed to give consumers and professionals more confidence and inspiration,” said Corinne Avelines, Global Head of Digital & eCommerce at AkzoNobel Decorative Paints.

“The Visualizer gives people the freedom to experiment and make bolder choices and highlights how we are increasingly embracing digital innovations alongside our product innovations in order to solve problems for consumers and ultimately grow our business.”

Marketed through the company’s decorative paints brands (Dulux in the UK, Coral in Brazil and Flexa in the Netherlands, for example) the app was developed after talking to more than 5,000 customers, designers and painters.

The core innovation behind the Visualizer is the Computer Vision technology which enables the user to apply realistic virtual paint to their walls, in real-time, without affecting picture frames and other furniture. Compatible with both Android and iOS devices, it is currently available in 44 countries and will continue to be rolled out over the coming months.

“We’re always looking for ways to share our global color expertise and encourage customers to express themselves through the use of color,” added Avelines. “Enabling people to picture rooms before they paint them is not only fun, it’s also a great way of combining digital technology with personal design vision.”

The app was developed in partnership with String, Tessella and Webcredible, while the award was presented in recognition of the most effective and innovative use of collaborative technology.

To download the app, visit the Apple store or Google Play and search for Visualizer, plus the name of your local AkzoNobel paint brand.

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We're Hiring

You’ve read our story and seen a little of what we’ve been up to…

“After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you join us in Wonderland, and we show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”

At String® we research and develop advanced computer vision technologies, user interfaces and consumer software products for the coming wave of perceptual computing. In other words we’re solving very difficult problems in order to build our vision of the future.

We are looking for world class talent to join our rapidly growing team and currently have positions open for senior computer vision specialists.

Required

Masters/PhD in computer vision or equivalent industrial experience
Strong background in computer vision and/or machine learning
Relevant research experience in computer vision and machine learning algorithms and applications: applying and experimenting with a wide range of techniques to solve real-world problems
Proven experience developing computationally efficient real-time computer vision algorithms in C/C++
Strong math skills, particularly in the fields of statistics, calculus, geometry and advanced linear algebra

Preferable

Experience in graphics and computer vision libraries such as OpenGL and OpenCV
Experience with GPGPU programming and low level performance optimizations on mobile devices (NEON, INTEL SSE)
Relevant research experience in computer vision and machine learning algorithms and applications: applying and experimenting with a wide range of techniques to solve real-world problems
Strong publication record in relevant journals and conferences

If this is you let us know at quietlyconfident@string.co

When applying, please provide your resume and links to any apps/projects you’ve been involved in.

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Contact

If you’re interested in discussing strategic partnerships or how our computer vision R&D may be able to help you and your business please contact us below.

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Visualizer

Winner of the 2014 UK IT Industry Award's Most Innovative Mobile App

The Visualizer app from AkzoNobel, is a free Augmented Reality tool for iOS and Android, which enables consumers to re-colour their walls while viewing the results live on their mobile device, as they move around the room.

Choosing colour for the home can be a stressful experience, and in the UK alone it is estimated that 3m households a year give up on painting projects at a cost of over £200m. By providing a tool to quickly visualise paint colour, in-situ and in real-time, consumers can quickly and confidently choose the right colours for their home, prior to using paint testers.

For AkzoNobel, the app also promises to significantly shorten the sales cycle through e-commerce integration, while strengthening their global brand portfolio, encompassing some of the world’s best known paint brands such as Dulux, Flexa, Nordsjö and Coral.

Developed in collaboration with mobile app developers Tessella and customer experience agency Webcredible, the Visualizer was launched globally throughout June and July 2014, in over 40 markets, in 18+ languages and across 25 brands.

String’s fierce drive and passion, and their unwavering confidence that they could invent the necessary core technologies, enabled us to bring this challenging project to reality. We’re very proud to lead the industry by providing this ground breaking tool for consumers, and we’re excited about our partnership with String moving forwards.
— Stewart Longhurst, AkzoNobel Head of Digital Operations

Development of the Visualizer

In 2013, AkzoNobel partnered with String® on what was initially an R&D project, to explore the possibility of a computer vision based broad wall visualisation application. Computer vision is a discipline within the field of computer science, which focuses on processing and applying visual data from the real world, in a similar way to how our own eyes and brains work.

Handling the diverse range of room environments and lighting conditions which may be encountered, presented a number of technical challenges. In order to overcome these, String® researched and developed proprietary algorithms bespoke to the Visualizer, to analyse and process live video from the device camera.

These algorithms identify broad areas of interest - in this case, walls - and then isolate household objects, such as TVs, picture frames and furniture, to prevent them from being recoloured.

Ambient lighting conditions in the room are measured, so that when the ‘paint' is applied, shadows and subtle variations are retained for more natural looking results. Finally in order for the virtual ‘paint’ to remain locked to the wall surface as the user moves around, custom software was written to process positioning and orientation data, from the device’s hardware sensors.

Key Technical Requirements

CV based solution, rather than relying on time-of-flight or FLIR sensors, due to the current saturation of traditional camera-based devices in the market.
Automatically isolate features such as windows, doors, TVs and paintings when applying virtual paint to existing walls.
Process and analyse the real-time ambient lighting conditions to ensure natural looking results when re-colouring, retaining surface shadows and subtle variations.
Track the environment and user inputs to remember walls that have previously been painted during that session.
Provide an immersive experience for the consumer with high frame rates across a broad range of consumer tablet and smartphone devices.
Deliver as a cross platform SDK for integration into the broader Visualizer application.

User Interaction / User Experience Concepts

Due to the amount of screen space required for the Visualizer’s camera feed, one of the key design objectives was to keep on-screen clutter to an absolute minimum, to avoid hindering the fluidity of the user’s journey, while providing all the tools they need.

Leveraging our commercial experience in interaction design, we built an in-house custom prototyping framework which allowed the team to rapidly design, iterate and test interaction concepts from desktop to mobile, prior to final API development.

Some of the concepts the team explored included accelerometer-based gestures for rapid clearing of paint within a scene, simple touch gestures to refine colours and swipe-able colour palettes, in addition to standard touch events.

While many ideas were discarded in order to reduce user friction, key features such as single tap-to-paint, visual paint anchors (with inertial fade-outs), masking tape, inclusion of the colour swatch on screen grab, and low light notifications, all emerged from this process and were implemented in the release.

Our belief is that technology should work like magic: providing a delightful, easy and useful experience. This ethos remains at the core of all of String’s technical and creative endeavours.

Future

The uncompromising vision for the project required String® to break new ground in this field and what you see today represents a first step towards that vision. On-going research and development will bring significant advances to future versions of the product.