Posts Tagged: "virtual reality"

It looks like Apple is looking to edge into the mobile virtual reality market dominated by Samsung’s Gear VR with the technology outlined by U.S. Patent Application No. 20160085076, entitled Head-Mounted Display Apparatus for Retaining a Portable Electronic Device with Display. This innovation is designed to eliminate wired connections in head-mounted displays which may be cumbersome to users. Fitness tracker technologies are another area of focus for Apple’s R&D, as is evidenced by the filing of U.S. Patent Application No. 20160058372, titled Terrain Type Inference from Wearable with Motion Sensing. This invention is designed to provide more accurate reports of calorie expenditures during aerobic exercise, which can vary based on the type of terrain being traversed.

Technology integrated with health tools is a becoming a very popular trend within the healthcare industry and is increasingly being used on a more regular basis. Many of the wearable devices are providing a plethora of health data that can be used to inform both personal and clinical decisions for consumers utilize the growing roster of available tools. These popular do-dads range from fitness trackers to wearable heart rate monitors. Many are saying these devices will change the way we live and interact with technology from a physical perspective.

This year’s edition of the consumer trade show featured many companies which had placed a firm focus on the development of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies. Modern-day virtual reality technologies can perhaps be traced back to American computer scientist Ivan Sutherland who created the world’s earliest stereoscopic headset, the Sword of Damocles, in the late 1960s. With the long-awaited Oculus Rift virtual reality headset about to hit consumer markets in 2016, this year’s CES became a large opportunity for rival firms to stake their claim before the consumer market for virtual reality technologies begins to mature.

In 2014, Samsung Electronics was second overall among companies receiving U.S. patents with approximately 13.5 patents every day over the course of a year. While much of Samsung’s recently acquired portfolio relates to semiconductor and memory devices, they are also a big player in wearable technologies. In fact, Samsung is the top filer of patent applications related to wearable technologies, accounting for about four percent of the 41,301 patents making up the wearables field according to a study by Lux Research of Boston, MA.

This year’s E3 conference heralded the coming of some highly anticipated titles as well as some interesting technological trends that may change the course of the industry in the near future. Since the earliest days of the video gaming, the business model has largely been predicated upon a model in which consumers own a hardware console and buy additional game cartridges or discs. Video game developers create hardware with exacting technical specifications which are able to execute ever more complex game software. With the rise of cloud-based app gaming, however, a very basic aspect of video game retailing might be set to undergo a massive change.

We found another pair of patents related to digital worlds, an area where IBM has been active of late. A system for ensuring that the highest number of objects contained within a three-dimensional scene are seen by a person navigating the scene is the focus of U.S. Patent No. 8970586. The patent claims a clairvoyance method for a 3D scene by acquiring parameters associated with a clairvoyance camera and a clairvoyance viewport, determining a 3D scene to be rendered according to those parameters, rendering the 3D scene to obtain a 2D image presented in the clairvoyance viewport and composing the 2D image presented in both a clairvoyance viewpoint and a general scene viewport. This system overcomes issues of inconvenient manipulation virtual contentand low efficiency in modifying a 3D scene view to uncover an object.