Slyce, a Canada-based fashion app developer, has enhanced its offering by acquiring computer vision technology developed at Canada’s York University.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The start-up is offering a fashion app which allows the user to snap a picture of an item of clothing or accessory, which can then be purchased immediately through the e-commerce platform. York’s technology will improve the accuracy of Slyce’s existing platform, providing users with more accurate results.
Ehsan Fazl-Ersi, who designed the technology as part of his PhD at York and has joined Slyce as its chief science officer, said: “Identifying and classifying an object captured within a scene is difficult due to the effects of background clutter, lighting variations and viewpoint changes on the object’s appearance. This is a much bigger problem for mobile applications where the algorithm’s speed and efficiency are the difference between losing a consumer or making a sale. Our technology will provide higher accuracy when quickly identifying retail items so that consumers can choose among similar items according to style, colour or pattern using a mobile device.”
Commercialisation firm MaRS Innovation joined York’s tech transfer unit Innovation York in filing the patent on the technology, developing its commercialisation plan, and securing grant funding.
