Royal Mail is using Augmented Reality (AR) in its new special-issue stamps, calling them the ‘world’s first intelligent stamps’.

Launched last Friday, the stamps use an image-recognition app Junaio to direct smartphone users to specifically designed online content.

After downloading the app, available for iPhone and Android devices, users simply snap a picture of the stamp and are then directed to a website on their mobile browsers where a short film of Bernard Cribbins reading a W H Auden’s poem, ‘The Night Mail’, is launched.

A Royal Mail spokesman said the company is very excited to bring intelligent stamps to the nation’s post.

“This is the first time a national postal service has used this kind of technology on their stamps.

“Intelligent stamps mark the next step in the evolution of our stamps, bringing them firmly into the 21st century.”

In the short film, Cribbins is reading the poem in a classic rail carriage used in the film ‘The Railway Children’. The carriage is currently at the Warteloo Station forming a part of the set of the stage version of the film.