Google’s Project Glass is an impressive device. But until it hits the streets in a few weeks, what do we really know about it?
Pretty darn little, if you ask me.
Yes, we know that Project Glass are virtual reality glasses, able to project computer generated images into your view, which also have video camera and some sort of wireless connectivity allowing you to broadcast live video feed to the cloud.
But how do you control it? How do you input necessary data and issue commands to tell Project Glass to display a map, and show you walking directions to your friend’s house at a particular address? Or dial a number?
Well, Google’s patent application “Methods and Systems for a Virtual Input Device” gives us one possible answer. By putting a camera on one arm of the glasses, and a laser projector on another arm, to project a virtual keypad/keyboard onto your hand.
Laser projected virtual keyboards, while not too popular, have been around for a long time. Project Glass just takes the basic idea a little further.
By projecting a virtual keypad onto your hand, it allows you to control it via various gestures. Tilting, rotating your hand, moving a thumb, pressing a fist, etc. will let you do a lot of cool things even with a simplified keypad that fits on your hand. And, since the projector and camera is already there, if you need to do some serious typing – just sit down and have a full blown QWERTY keyboard projected onto a flat surface in front of you.
Is such a laser projected virtual keypad already in the current version of Project Glass? Maybe, maybe not. I have no idea. But even if it’s not there yet, I’m pretty sure it will be in Project Glass V2 or V3
No comments:
Post a Comment