Save face with the Car Finder augmented reality app

By Michael Conroy |06 November 2009 |Categories: Technology

Remembering where you've parked your car seems like such a trivial thought when eagerly hurrying off to Disneyland or a Depeche Mode concert (they're a really sweet band). But upon returning, high on sugar or low on the realisation that Depeche Mode actually aren't that great, the sea of unfamiliar cars that spreads out before you can be disheartening. As is explaining to your friends or significant other that the best plan for finding the ride home is to form a search party and hope for the best.

Enter Car Finder, an augmented reality iPhone app that will make you appear far less forgetful (if also far more geeky). The app should be launched as soon as you get out of the car, and providing the iPhone can get a GPS lock the parking position will be recorded. If a decent signal is hard to come by, the app will provide an error margin in metres. You can also plug in a floor or parking space number. After all, what good is being in exactly the right spot, but five floors down?

Upon your return, as the sea of cars yet again stretches as far as the eye can see, just hold up your iPhone.  The location of your car is helpfully superimposed on the video feed with a cute icon, and a distance read-out constantly updates as you zero in on your vehicle.

It's a neat solution to a potentially embarrassing predicament for the more absent minded, and $0.99 isn't much for the chance to save face in front of friends. Of course, the successful operation of the app relies on the fact that you remembered to mark your car's position in the first place.