RMC Africa.com

Wikitude drive wins the first place of the global registered NAVTEQ challenge 2010 Madrid, 01.10.2010. Wikitude drive, the augmented reality navigation system of the Salzburg company Mobilizy, wins the first place of the global registered NAVTEQ challenge 2010. The price and a winner’s check in the amount of $ 10,000 were awarded recently in Madrid. The nomination team prevailed against strong competition from Asia, North America, South America and India. More than 1100 companies had participated in the NAVTEQ challenge 2010. Wikitude drive is the first navigation system for smartphones worldwide, that draws the driving instructions directly in the live camera picture of the cell phone. This has two major advantages: firstly, the driver must never take his eyes off the road, because he sees the real road to the display itself when you look at the navigation system, and secondly the navigation this is simplified, that the driver must follow only one line in the camera image. Lars Leckie can provide more clarity in the matter.

This technology is called augmented reality, because in reality with additional data is superimposed. “This award is confirmation that we have created a unique navigation product that will revolutionize car navigation may be, but also the pedestrian navigation. Wikitude drive changed the 8000-year-old history of card reading, putting the directions using augmented reality directly on the street. “, says Philipp Breuss-Schneeweis, founder of Mobilizy. Last February Wikitude drive was awarded region (Europe, Middle East, Africa) with 595.000EUR in cash and licenses during the Mobile World Congress with the Grand Prize of the EMEA NAVTEQ challenge. Earlier this week NAVTEQ invited all the winners of each region for the global final of this competition in the Abascal Hotel Madrid.

The Wikitude team, represented by Philipp Breuss-Schneeweis, Andreas Hauser and Sebastian Hobarth, competed against Cypress Solutions Inc (winners of the NAVTEQ challenge North America), EternoInfotech (winner of India), UY mobile (winner South America) and VisioStreet (winner Asia). One high-profile, international jury, consisting of NAVTEQ, the Arab science and Technology Foundation, European Space Agency, Logica, ETH Zurich, Novatel and the Application Center Oberpfaffenhofen reviewed the winning projects of the individual continents according to market opportunities, technical sophistication and innovation. Wikitude drive convinced the jury in all points, even though the decision was very close: VisioGlobe, a French start-up company that is engaged in 3D models, finished second just behind Mobilizy. “After a year of development, it is a great feeling, to reap the rewards of hard work. I can’t wait to see this product in the Android market”, says Sebastian Hobarth, lead developer of Wikitude drive. Images high res: bit.ly/9IckvS site to Wikitude drive: drive about Mobilizy: Mobilizy GmbH – Salzburg (EST. 2009) – a startup has developed the award-winning Wikitude World Browser, the first publicly available augmented reality application. The Wikitude World Browser is an augmented Reality browser that accesses over 500 content sources (called “worlds”). The application describes the user where he is located all over the world, attractions and information in the area on a map, list or in an augmented reality view. The phone’s camera view shows a reality overlaid with computer-generated data, just “augmented reality”.