Patent Hints at Possible AR-Focused Smart Glasses From Apple
Recently, a patent filing from Apple surfaced and suggested the possible creation of wearable smart glasses mainly for augmented reality functions.
Last July 27, the United States Patent and Trademark Office published the said patent that was titled "Method for Representing Points of Interest in a View of a Real Environment on a Mobile Device and Mobile Device Therefor." Documents showed it was originally filed in April.
The patent presented several feasible ways on how points of interest based on a real environment could be measured or viewed with intricacy through the help of AR technology.
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Evidently, in one of the illustrations, it is safe to say that a head-mounted item such as a smart glass is one effective mobile device that can feature an object or a real-life environment on an AR platform.
Figures 10a and 10b of the patent shows how a smart glass that is equipped with a "head-mounted display" and supports AR technology can see a real-life object with much more detail.
With regards to how this technology would work on a smart glass, Apple explained: "It is typically not possible for the user to touch the head-mounted screen in a manner like a touchscreen. However, the camera that captures an image of the real environment may also be used to detect image positions of the user's finger in the image. The image positions of the user's finger could be equivalent to touching points touched by the user's finger on the touchscreen."
During Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference last June, the company announced that one of the areas they want to give more focus to in the coming months is AR development. In fact, one of the highlights in the WWDC 2017 was when Apple released the ARKit that was meant to help app developers "build detailed and compelling virtual content on top of real-world scenes."
It now appears that Apple has already taken steps to advance in that area, even before the pronouncement was made. The above-mentioned patent was filed months before WWDC 2017. Added to that, back in 2015, Apple acquired Metaio — best known as one of the advanced AR-focused companies at the time. In fact, one of the inventors of the said patent was Metaio's co-founder Peter Meier.
