Welcome to Patent Bolt, a dedicated Intellectual Property news site that specializes in dissecting patent applications from leading industry players such as Microsoft, Google, Samsung and others. If you love to explore future inventions, you'll love our site.
Earlier today we posted a report titled "Google Glass Advances with Superimposed Controls & More," which was all about superimposed controls and instructions for external devices such as a kitchen fridge, computer printers and controlling your garage door operations. In this afternoon's report, we point you to another Google patent application that is mainly focused on the key component that is Google Glass – the very Glass eyepiece itself.
On March 21, 2013, the US Patent & Trademark Office published a major patent application from Google that reveals how Google Glass will work with superimposed controls and instructions for external devices such as a kitchen fridge, computer printers and/or copiers at home and/or work and control your garage door operations. Google's patent also illustrates a straight style of eyeglasses that introduces a center camera on its bridge. Google revealed last week that Google Glass will be modular and therefore work with prescription glasses. Overtime Google will work with a frames manufacturer to create a custom frame that will come with a built-in camera as noted in our cover graphic.
Today, the US Patent and Trademark Office officially published Google's granted patent relating to their "Facial Recognition" invention. The granted patent focuses on the facial recognition system behind Android's unlock security feature. Although the patent outlines a failsafe module or mechanism to ensure the system can't be fooled, it was proven to be easily fooled by those over at Phandroid.
The US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Google that reveals their intentions to bring backside controls to future android devices that could turn a page of an ebook, article on the web or flip to next or previous views of photos and perhaps music albums in a playlist. Apple first introduced this idea for future tablets back in 2006,so the race is now on. Apple has sat on a number of great ideas over the years and never acted on them. So it just might be Google that's hungry enough to actually bring this feature to market first. In the end: may the best team win.
A year ago, Patently Apple posted a report titled "Google Patent Clearly Eying the Desktop Market for Android." Of course listing Android was a slip on our part because it was supposed to be Chrome. The patent report also clearly illustrated a trackpad for a notebook and one year later, voila, Google announces the Chromebook Pixel. For all intents and purposes that's a patent fulfilled. The twist to Google's Chromebook is that it will offer a touchscreen. And that angle was covered in a recently published patent application by Google with another twist. Chrome OS will be coming to future tablets. Technically, this could eventually tie into a future Ultrabook Convertible type of Chromebook whereby the display is able to pop-off of a Chromebook Pixel notebook to be used as a functioning tablet. But there's one more thing: The tablet housing is touch sensitive and will be able to allow the user to position UI elements where they wish on the display by simply touching the tablet's housing in specific areas.
First there was Google Glass Part 1, the single-eye monocular version of their Head Mounted Display which is simply known as Google Glass or Glass. Now Google Glass Part 2 is in the works which is about dual eye displays known as binocular Head Mounted Displays. This type of Glass holds a few more challenges concerning the perfecting of alignment so that computer graphic images (CGIs) projected onto the lenses are correct for both the right and left lenses. To achieve this, specialized lasers have been designed to pull it off just right. You know it's a serious project at Google when its co-founder Sergey Brin is the lead inventor.
Google has so many Project Glass patents flying out of the US Patent Office that it's hard to tell one idea from the other. Yet two new ideas were indeed discovered lately in one of their patents that conveyed new mental images of what we may come to expect from Project Glass over time. Google tells us that there will be at least two known applications for Project Glass: email and a web browser. The invention describes these apps as being projected onto a micro-display connected to the frame of the eyewear. Moreover, Google states that while the information may be viewed by the user in 2 or 3D imagery, the imagery may in fact "appear as a ring or cloud of icons around the user. The user may then touch a touch pad" found on the frame of the eyewear that will "enable the user to spin the ring." A second visual found in this latest invention is described below.
On January 24, 2013, the US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Google that reveals new information about their Project Glass eyewear. Their eyewear, technically acknowledged as being a head-mounted display (HMD), is going to have unique audio capabilities built right into the frame of their eyewear. Google describes their miniature audio system as involving at least one vibration transducer that functions as a speaker. Some of Google's ideas for their eyewear audio system include some rather new concepts. On the surface it's easy to dismiss them as off-the-wall, but until Google executes on them, we have to at minimum, give these ideas a chance to come to market before judging them. Taking risks at times could be the spice of life or end up hanging you. Time will tell how this will play out in the market.
In November we posted a report titled "Apple & Google: Tech Leaders in Harnessing Solar Energy," where we pointed out how these two Silicon Valley technology leaders were rightfully taking advantage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act's generous tax credits for developing alternative clean energy. Clean energy just happened to be a particular point that Obama once again spoke of during his inauguration speech yesterday. Google has been working on a number of next-generation energy projects such as delivering Heliostat mirrors that will be able to harness solar energy against strong winds and hail. Another such project came to light earlier this month when the US Patent and Trademark Office published a new patent application tilted "Solar Energy Substrate Aerodynamic Flaps." For those of you who are interested in all-things related to Green Energy, you should check out Google's latest invention right here, or should I say Moon Shot Project.
