Mobile Visual Search for Fashion

Cortexica, a spin-out company at Imperial College has developed software that will help
consumers to make better fashion choices by replicating the way that the eye and the brain
have worked together to recognize patterns over millions of years of evolution. The Cortexica
“Find Similar” software mimics the way the brain processes images and finds similarities. An
image of a dress, a blouse or a shirt, for example, is captured by a consumer using a
smartphone, it is then analyzed by the software and a series of images of available items are
returned to the consumer’s phone with similar characteristics, such as colour, shape and
design. Several leading UK fashion retailers are testing the software, which will be integrated
into websites and mobile phone-based apps, ahead of a full launch in the autumn 2014.
However the technology needs to be developed further to optimize its performance and
maximize the benefit to the retailer and the end user.
This Prototype Proposal sets out to extend Cortexica’s existing mobile visual search capability
and exploit new mobile devices such as Google Glass. This grant application will provide the
funds to do BETTER and FASTER R&D necessary to make progress, provide the tools to
measure sales uplift, but also give us the wherewithal to seek MORE clients. There are a
number of challenges, technical and UI-related, along the road to making this vision of “Find
Similar” become reality, however we believe there is a significant business opportunity which
this grant will help leverage.