Social Tourism Using Photos

Mobile phones are frequently used to determine one's location and navigation directions, and they can also provide a platform for connecting tourists with each other. This paper proposes a system that uses a set of geotagged photos to automatically compute the geographic location of another photo and then augment that photo with text and images that enable collaboration and enhance navigation. The system breaks up the world into smaller regions and then computes a geographic location using one method and a complete camera pose using a more complex method, both methods utilize robust local feature matching. Tourists can then add text and images to objects in a photo which are then augmented onto other photos viewing the same object, allowing them to share information linked to speci c objects in their environment. Navigation information in the form of arrows are projected onto photos pointing tourists in the direction of their selected destination. This system is particularly applicable to places such as malls, museums, and theme parks where photos can provide more information than GPS, but it can be applied anywhere.