Tag: google wearables

A new Google patent reveals that AR technology is being developed, which could provide users with a map of their environment.

Late last week, a Google patent was published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which described a type of augmented reality technology that would enable users wearing an optical head-mounted display, like Google Glass, to view information about objects in their environment within their line of sight, reported the International Business Times.

The new technology would allow for the detection and recognition of target devices.

According to the patent application, the internet and computer software giant’s patent is called “Self-Describing Three-Dimensional (3D) Object Recognition and Control Descriptors for Augmented Reality Interfaces”. The abstract of the official patent application states that the technology would “provide for the detection and recognition of target devices, by a mobile computing device, within a pre-defined local environment.”

In essence, what this means, according to the patent, is that the technology would provide users with details about the items that exist within their environment. For instance, this could include finding out the width and height of certain objects, such as tables or chairs, via augmented reality, as well as give users a map of the room in which they are present.

This new patent may be good news for the future of Google Glass.

If this technology actually worked, in theory, it would be like having robot vision; something like the point of view that is commonly used in films to show what a robot sees as it analyzes its environment. More specifically, if a Google Glass device was equipped with this technology, it would have the potential to provide users with all the details they want to know about a certain object in a room, just by looking at it.

That being said, as exciting as this technology sounds, it is unlikely that it will give “Terminator”, “Robocop” or “Iron Man” vision to Google Glass users in the future. Right now, it’s still far too early to tell what will eventually be developed. After all, Google’s latest patent application only provides a glimpse of what the company is thinking. It doesn’t even guarantee that the product will ever reach commercialization.

This new Advanced Technology and Projects group wants wearables to be somewhat like fabric touchscreens.

Google is testing out a whole new direction for its wearable technology through the manufacture of some very high-tech fabrics that could be incorporated into wearables that could be worn as clothing.

This effort is being made by the company’s Project Soli and Project Jacquard teams in its new projects group.

They are a part of the Google Advanced Technology and Projects Group. Those two projects, which actually weave the electronics right into fabrics that can be worn as a combination of clothing and wearable technology, and that use a gesture-based interface, were first unveiled in San Francisco at the Google I/O developer event on Friday. By bringing those two projects together, the result has been what could somewhat be described as a fabric that functions a bit like a touchscreen.

Coming in contact with this wearable technology in various ways would activate it like a touchscreen.

There are different ways of stroking over the tech fabric, which would signal different events to take place. One could, for example, make a call over a smartphone, while another might turn the lights on in a room. Various types of contact with the patch of technology woven fabric would make it possible to accomplish an array of different types of goals.

In order to get in on the potential for this wearable tech, Levi Strauss & Co. has already entered into a partnership deal with Google.

Project Jacquard, itself, brings two different types of technologies together. The first is to weave together the conductive threads and work them into a patch of cloth. The second is to create an electronics package that would function with those threads in order to be able to read what they have sensed, so that it can be relayed into a type of signal that could be understood by a computer.

This wearable technology project was named after the first mechanical loom in history that was designed to be able to create complex fabric styles and patterns (one example of what it could do was brocades).