Amazon Wants to Bring Virtual Reality to Your Living Room

When we think about augmented reality, most of us envision products such as Microsoft’s HoloLens or the Google Glass. However, thanks to Amazon, we might soon be able to enjoy the wonders of augmented reality without relying on a headset at all. Amazon is interested in developing a solution based on a stationary projector that doesn’t require any type of headgear like glasses, goggles or a visor. To this end, the company was recently granted a pair of patents that could allow them to bring augmented reality to our living rooms. The patents in question are named ’’reflector-based depth mapping of a scene’’ and “object tracking in a 3-dimensional environment”, both of which could be used to stream augmented images onto actual objects. Moreover, the user would be able to interact with these objects through gesture input such as hand tracking.

It’s worth pointing out that the idea is not entirely original, as Microsoft’s IllumiRoom used a Kinect motion-sensing camera and a projector to cast the images of a TV set to the surrounding environment. Microsoft eventually renamed the technology, but its experts decided that it was too expensive to be introduced to consumers. Even though Amazon now owns the aforementioned patents, there is no guarantee that they will actually launch a consumer product, at least not in the near future. We can still hope, though.