What is the connection between a rover exploring Mars and an iPad 2? Both devices are capable of identifying their surroundings with the help of a camera and some software. 13th Lab has built that software for iPad based on theory originally developed by NASA. The technology was first used to automatically navigate rovers on Mars and then it was employed for military and healthcare applications as well as by big utility companies. 13th Lab  was the first company to adapt the technology for consumer products. To showcase what it is capable of, they launched an iPad game - Ball Invasion. It's a simple shooting game but it takes augmented reality to a whole new level: it uses iPad's camera to recognize the environment around you so that bullets bounce off the walls or any other objects in your surroundings. Ball Invasion went live as a paid app ($1.99) last Monday and by now it's a #2 paid app in Swedish AppStore and is a featured app in AppStores in US and Canada.

'We are not a gaming company', says Petter Ivmark, founder of 13th Lab. 'But we want to bring augmented reality to consumer products. We are building a platform that can be used for multiple applications.' The technology behind Ball Invasion and the platform as a whole is called SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping): it does 3D modelling of the space where the device's camera is looking at in real-time and accurately defines where the device is located within that space.

'This is a pretty complicated technology: it requires a lot of specific math and low level programming skills, meaning that very few developers work with it today — and we want the technology to have a broader appeal and open it up for other developers in the future', explains Petter.

13th Lab have been building the platform for about a year now. 'When we started off existing consumer products were not powerful enough to run our technology though their computing power was growing exponentially. Therefore we made a bet that we'd start building the platform and by the time it's ready consumer electronics would catch up', reveals Petter. A bet that 13th Lab definitely won.

'Since our technology is new and slightly complicated, we decided to make a game to showcase what it is capable of. We half-expected people not to understand what it's about or find it weird, but the response has been extremely positive', Petter confesses. Within a week of its release Ball Invasion was featured in a bunch of publications like GigaOm, Gizmodo, Cnet and Slashdot. One can even find reviews of the game in Chinese, French and Hebrew.

13th Lab was founded by Petter Ivmark, Anders Bond and Oskar Linde. It is funded by the founders and two business angels. Company's main target groups are developers (that work with computer vision or augmented reality) and companies that would like to build a product on top of the platform like media or ad agencies.