Skip to main content

Amazon Just Patented a Living Room Holodeck

Just strap a projector to your ceiling and you're good to go.


Augmented reality tech like Microsoft's Hololens and the upcoming Magic Leap are undeniably cool, but they do have a downside. You have to wear some chunky thing on your face to use them. That's a problem it looks like Amazon might be out to solve. The web-commerce giant just patented two different technologies that could help bring holograms to the living room with out the cumbersome specs.






The first, a patent for "object tracking in a 3-dimensional environment," is all about being able to track movement in a room. Unlike Microsoft's Kinect, which sits atop a TV and just looks forward, the system Amazon outlines would be able to track the movement of a user's hands throughout an entire room with as little as one ceiling mounted node. Meanwhile, a patent for a "reflector-based depth mapping of a scene," pairs a single ceiling-mounted projector with a depth-sensing camera that sits on a table. When all is said and done, the two would theoretically pair to create glasses-free holograms you could control with your hands while sitting on the couch.





This is just a couple of patents, so there's no guarantee that Amazon would follow through on the tech, but it does align with some of the experiments the Everything Store has tried in the past.The (god-awful) Fire Phone was big into motion-tracking with its absurd suite of six front-facing cameras. Meanwhile, the Amazon Echo voice-control-tube-thing is all about tablet-top tech that brings the internet seamlessly into your living room the same way this crazy hologram system might. 
It's likely to be years before holograms are actually showing up in your living room (if they ever do at all), but cutting the bulky headsets out of the equation definitely makes it a cooler prospect.


Source: USPTO via Bloomberg



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Solar car hits U.S. in round-the-world jaunt

Last October, the SolarWorld GT solar-powered car set out from Darwin, Australia on a drive around the world. It has since driven 3,001 kilometers (1,865 miles) across Australia, logged 1,947 km (1,210 miles) crossing New Zealand and been shipped across the Pacific Ocean. This Friday, it will embark on the U.S. leg of its journey, as it sets out across America from the University of California, Santa Barbara.   The SolarWorld GT is the result of a collaboration between solar panel manufacturer SolarWorld, and Bochum University of Applied Sciences in Germany. The four-wheeled, two-door, two-seat car gathers solar energy through photovoltaic panels built into its roof, with its solar generator offering a peak performance of 823 watts. Custom hub motors are located in both of the front wheels. The vehicle manages an average speed of 50 km/h (31 mph), with a claimed top speed of 100 km/h (62 mph). In order to demonstrate that solar powered cars needn't be a radical...

Biocomputer, Alternative To Quantum Computers

A team of international scientists from Canada, the U.K., Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden announced Friday that they had developed a model biological supercomputer capable of solving complex mathematical problems using far less energy than standard electronic supercomputers. The model “biocomputer,” which is roughly the size of a book, is powered by Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) — dubbed the “molecular unit of currency.” According to description of the device, published in the  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , the biocomputer uses proteins present in all living cells to function. It uses a strategy similar to that of quantum computers, which use qubits — the quantum computing equivalents of bits — to perform “parallel computation,” wherein  computers are able to process information quickly and accurately by performing several calculations simultaneously, rather than sequentially. In the case of the biocomputer, the qubits are replaced with ...

Qualcomm showcases the Snapdragon S4 ahead of Mobile World Congress

We’ve already heard about Qualcomm’s latest processor, the Snapdragon S4 , which will be quad-core and utilize LTE. Qualcomm took the time to give us some details ahead of Mobile World Congress. The new SoC now supports up to three cameras (two in the back for 3D and one front-facing), 20-megapixels, and recording video at 1080p (30fps). We can also expect zero shutter lag, 3A processing (autofocus, auto exposure and auto white balance), and improved blink/smile detection, gaze estimation, range finding and image stabilization. Last but not least, it supports gesture detection/control, augmented reality , and computer vision (via Qualcomm’s FastCV). Hit the break for a couple of videos featuring image stabilization and gestures.