Ubiquitous shortcuts: mnemonics by just taking photos

Ubiquitous Shortcuts is an image processing based method for making and using mnemonics set onto the real world using smartphones or other computing systems. The mnemonics can be created by taking photos of the user's vicinity and by binding them onto command sequences. The mnemonic is triggered every time a similar photo is taken. Our method uses natural feature matching algorithms and end-user programming approaches. The mnemonics can be concatenated into more complex command sequences. Thus, limited user input is realized by just taking photos with a camera embedded into a finger-ring, which enables rapid, subtle and socially acceptable user interaction. Our method can be used as semi-automatic way of achieving location and context sensitive services, activity recognition or tangible interaction.