Being based in Tokyo has many advantages, and one of them is to be able to visit awesome tech startups like AITIA: the Tokyo-based startup consists of just two people (a CEO and a CTO), having hired a third person (to run the business side of things) just three months ago.
What’s more important is that they have developed pretty impressive mobile technology: the company’s CTO single-handedly developed what is supposed to be the world’s first augmented reality “motion camera app”.
Dubbed Mosimo Camera (“What If Camera”), the Android app adds animated CG to videos based on the faces and motions of the objects – in real-time and without markers. The problem is that the app isn’t available on the Android market yet because of API restrictions (no adding of animated effects to videos in real-time is allowed).
Instead, AITIA was able to circumvent the restrictions by inking a deal with Toshiba’s handset division (which never collaborated with a smaller company before). Mosimo Camera is now pre-installed on Toshiba’s Regza Android phone, which Japan’s biggest mobile carriers, NTT Docomo and KDDI au, started distributing today (we covered that phone last month).
This demo clip shows how Mosimo Camera works:
Technically, the app is based on an awesome digital signage solution called Symphonic Motion that won a few awards in the past months (in other words, AITIA managed to squeeze that technology into an Android application).
I shot the Symphonic Motion video embedded below at the company’s office a few days ago (featuring AITIA CEO Hiroko Mugibayashi):
http://blip.tv/play/hMQ5gpWGbAI%2Em4v
AITIA will release the app on the Android market once the API issues are resolved. The company says it currently is in negotiations with handset makers world-wide to get the app on more Android phones.