Cloud Recognition

The Vuforia Cloud Recognition service is an enterprise class Image Recognition solution that enables applications to recognize and track millions of Image Targets. Cloud Recognition is available as Cloud and Cloud Plus add-ons. Usage is determined by the total number of image recognitions, or “recos”, per month that your app performs. Each reco is counted when a target is matched.

Applications for Cloud Recognition

The Vuforia Cloud Recognition service is ideal for apps that require many targets, or targets that need to be updated frequently. Cloud Recognition is suitable for:

  • Publications – Catalogs, magazines, newspapers, etc.
  • Retailers – Product visualization, in-store traffic generation, etc.
  • Advertisers – Multi-branded content, coupons, promotions, etc.
  • Product Recognition – Wine labels/bottles, cereal boxes, etc.

Leverage the following benefits of Cloud Recognition for your product and services:

  • Scalability: More than one million targets can be used in an app.
  • Flexibility: Integrate with existing content management systems (CMS).
  • Time to Market: Deliver real-time, dynamically changing content and accelerate time to market.

Deploy and manage your Cloud Recognition databases in two ways:

Prerequisites

Supported formats

The Target Manager and the VWS API both support planar, 2D Image Targets for Cloud Image Recognition. Images used for Cloud Recognition must follow the same guidelines as Image Targets.

Please refer to Image Targets for more information and the best practices to create well tracking Image Targets for Cloud Recognition.

Supported licenses

  • Both the Basic and Premium plan can be extended with the Cloud add-ons. Both plans support by default up to 1,000 recos per month on up to 1,000 images.

  • Cloud add-on extends recos up to 10,000 per month on up to 100,000 images.
  • Cloud Plus add-on supports more than 10,000 recos per month on more than 100,000 images.

Access Keys

Configure the application with a Cloud Database client keys consisting of an access key and a secret key. The Client Access Keys and the Server Access keys are available in the created database in the Target Manager. Please refer to Vuforia Web Services for more details on the Access keys.

Cloud Recognition Databases

Create the Cloud Database

You can use the Target Manager to upload prepared images and any optional meta data associated with an image.

See the step-by-step guide on How to Work with Cloud Databases and Comparison of Device and Cloud Databases to get started.

Create the cloud database via the VWS 

In cases where you already have your own CMS, you can use the VWS API to query the cloud database, upload images, add metadata, and much more. A cloud database is still required to be created with the Target Manager.

See Vuforia Web Services and How to Use the VWS API to get started.

SDK Workflow

To get started with Cloud Recognition, see the Unity Core sample and Working with Cloud Recognition in Unity and learn how to handle cloud reco events and retrieving an image’s metadata.

Cloud Recognition in native apps use the VuCloudImageTargetObserver which manages the execution of queries and handling of query results. You can only associate one cloud database per application.

See Cloud Recognition API Overview for native development.

Cloud Recognition Usage

The Licenses tab provides a report on your app's user activity that indicates how many Cloud recos have been executed as a proportion of the app's monthly reco limit.

The app usage bar is color coded to indicate when you are approaching the maximum monthly usage for the plan associated with your app. If the bar is orange or red, your usage is approaching the maximum and you should determine whether you will need to move to a plan that supports greater usage.

For more information on Cloud Recognition counts, please see Counting Cloud Recognition Events.

Cloud Recognition Metadata

A Cloud Image Target can have metadata associated to it. A target’s metadata can be information and data on the image with a size limit up to 1 MB per Image Target. Use the metadata to store additional content that your application can process.

Data stored in metadata

For example, your application may use the metadata to store the following items:

  • A text message for your app to display on the screen of the device when the target is detected. For example: “Hello, I am your cloud Image Target XYZ, you have detected me!”
  • A URL string, for instance http://my_server/my_3d_models/my_model_01.obj, that points to a custom network location that you own and have content stored in, such as a 3D model, a video, an image, or any other custom data. For each different Image Target, your application could then use such a URL to display or download the specific content.
  • Some custom string text that your application can process and use to perform specific actions. Your metadata could also contain text to represent an object in JSON format, for example:
{
  "Name": "John",
  "Age" : "35",
  "Address": "10, Vuforia Avenue"
}
  • A complete 3D model, not just the URL pointing to a model on a server, but the model itself. For example, the metadata itself could embed an .OBJ 3D model, provided that the size does not exceed the 1 MB.
  • You can also store metadata containing the URL of a Unity Asset Bundle that is associated with the specific target (for instance, representing a 3D model or other Unity asset).

See AssetBundles to Package Augmentations in Unity for details on AssetBundles.

See How to Use Cloud Recognition for examples on retrieving the metadata associated to an Image Target.

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