IBM upgrades Seer-augmented reality app

Wimbledon tennis tournament to showcase new technology.

IBM has updated its augmented-reality application, called IBM Seer, which presents real-time information for smartphone users, and will demonstrate the improvements at the Wimbledon tennis championship later this month.

Seer was launched last year but has been greatly improved for this year's event to offer a far wider range of functions for Android and iPhone devices, and will be free to download for those at the event.

The application presents a range of integrated information including real-time scores from each court and live BBC video streams from the top two courts, along with information on traffic outside the ground and queues at stands inside.

Alan Flack, strategic brand manager at IBM, claimed that Seer demonstrates the "art of the possible", and that a successful trial at Wimbledon could be the first step to a wider rollout.

"There are a lot of potential uses for this technology, such as delivering real-time traffic updates, hotel information or other general city information as part of IBM's Smarter City concept," he said.

"To cope with the demand for the applications we have boosted the bandwidth on the site at Wimbledon to allow visitors to watch video, and will be using variable bit-rate technology on Wi-Fi to ensure it all runs smoothly."

Seer will also display Twitter updates sent from IBM staff around the Wimbledon site to provide real-time information on the event.

IBM also showed off its communications centre at Wimbledon, explaining how the system handles the huge surges in traffic during the event which last year peaked at 10 million visitors.