Accenture demos the 'Pocket Supercomputer'

Accenture's "Pocket Supercomputer" is in fact a phone behaving like a thin client. It can be used to send images and video of objects in real time to a server where they can be identified and linked to relevant information, which can then be sent back to the user.

The camera on the phone is used to take a video of an object — such as a book. According to the Accenture, the server software is smart enough to recognise the cover of the book — it's not yet able to read text — and can then, for example, return the price and history of the book, and details of where it can be bought.

By offloading the processing from a mobile device onto a server, there are few limits on the size and processing power available to be used for the storage and search of images.

"It started out as a robotics project," said Accenture's Fredrik Linaker who has lead the research on the project. "We added one, then two laptops to the robot. It became too heavy so we ripped the brain out of the body and put it in a different place, with a wireless link to the body."

The next step was accessing the central "brain" using a mobile device.