VietNamNet Bridge – Less than one month after The Smart Companion application by a group of the Hanoi-based FPT University was introduced, it has been offered in the Apple Store.



The students who developed the application.


This application was developed on the iOS operating system, which is useful for reading books in foreign languages and for travelers.

This application helps travelers to understand all text-based information within signboards, announcements, restaurant menus, etc. in foreign language using device's built-in camera. The application explores the advantages of an open source OCR engine named Tesseract. At present, this application works with 32 languages.

The application was developed by five students of the FPT University: Doan Van Cao, Vu Thanh Tung, Duong Tuan Dat, Tran Van Nam and Vuong Thi Hong Thuy. This is also this group’s graduation work.

The project was kicked of in April 2012 and it was firstly introduced in early August, before being tested for two months. The application is proved to work very well. It can translate contents of signboards very accurately, within several seconds.

The application was sent to Apple Store on August 18 and it was officially offered in Apple Store from August 29.

Accordingly, if each user pays $1 for the application, the application developer will receive $0.7 of copyright fee. The group plans to commercialize this application in Apple Store from mid-September, after they hire a stable server.

They also planed to upgrade the application for Window Phone and Android.

Compiled by Nam Nguyen