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MIT researchers have a found way to use augmented reality to bring TVs and cellphones together so viewers can watch more than just what’s playing right in front of them.
The technology, called ‘Surround Vision,’ uses footage taken from different angles so when someone points their phone beyond the edge of the TV screen, they can see the additional content on their mobile device.
For instance, Surround Vision could allow a guest at a Super Bowl party to check out different camera angles of a play, without affecting what other guests see on the screen, says MIT. Or viewers could use it to see alternate takes of a scene while watching a movie.
“This could be in your home next year if a network decided to do it,” says Media Lab research scientist Michael Bove who’s working on the project.
Augmented reality tries to enhance the physical world by overlaying virtual computer generated elements on it. Over the last one year, a number of apps designed especially for phones have emerged where all users have to do is point their phones at a physical object to get more information on their phones. MIT’s breakthrough extends that idea.
The Surround Vision prototype, built by MIT, added a magnetometer (compass) to an existing phone, since the accelerometer included in many phones is not sensitive enough to detect the subtle motion that comes from pointing a phone to the left or right of a TV screen.
And as MIT’s video below shows, the software incorporates the data gathered from the compass and integrates it with the phone’s other sensors so viewers get an enhanced picture.

To test it, Santiago Alfaro, a graduate student in the lab who’s leading the project, shot video footage of a street from three angles simultaneously. A TV plays the the footage from the center camera. When a viewer points a phone directly at the TV, the same footage appears on the device’s screen. But if the phone is aimed to the right or the left, then it switches to another perspective.
If the system were commercialized, the video playing on the handheld device would stream over the internet, says Alfaro.
Over the next few months, Alfaro says MIT Media Lab will test the system using sports broadcasts and children’s shows.
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Photo: Melanie Gonick/MIT

Source: Gadget Lab