Looktel—A comprehensive platform for computer-aided visual assistance

We present an extensible platform that integrates state of the art computer vision techniques with mobile communications to deliver a portable visual assistance tool. Live input video from a mobile smartphone is streamed over a 3G or wireless connection while an object recognition engine on a desktop processes the data stream. Recognition results are returned in real-time to the mobile device and announced by a text-to-speech engine. The system design is complete and includes the ability to add new items, share databases, and provide live remote human sighted assistance.