Is there a way to figure out 3D distance/view angle from a 2D environment using the iPhone/iPad camera?

Maybe I'm asking this too soon in my research, but I'd better know if this is possible sooner than later.

Imagine I have the following square printed on a paper on top of a table:

The table is brown, so it does not match with any of the colors in the square. Is there a way for me, from a common iPhone camera (non-stereo view), to figure out the distance and angle from which Im looking at the square in the t开发者_StackOverflow社区able?

In the end what I'm looking for is being able to draw a 3D square on top of this one using the camera image, but I'm not sure if I am going to be able to figure out the distance and position of the object in space using only a 2D image. Any hints are well appreciated.

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Short answer: http://weblog.bocoup.com/javascript-augmented-reality

Big answer: First posterize, Then vectorize, With the vectors in your power you may need to do some math tricks to define, based on the vectors position, the perspective and then the camera position.

Maybe this help:

• www.pixastic.com/lib/docs/actions/posterize/
• github.com/selead/cl-vectorizer
• vectormagic.com/home
• autotrace.sourceforge.net
• www.scipy.org/PyLab
• raphaeljs.com/
• technabob.com/blog/2007/12/29/video-games-get-vectorized/
• superuser.com/questions/88415/is-there-an-open-source-alternative-to-vector-magic

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Oughta be possible. Scan the image for the red/blue/yellow pattern, then do edge detection to figure out how warped the squares are (they'll be parallelograms in anything but straight-on view). Distance would depend on the camera's zoom setting and scan resolution. But basically you'd count how many pixels are visible in each of the squares, run that past the camera's specs and you should be able to determine a rough distance.