Samsung's new patent shows that we could use our wrists as smartwatches!
While smartwatches provide a nice little change from smartphones, they are far from perfect in terms of usability, battery life, and a variety of other factors. Now Samsung has filed a patent that could actually make smartwatches more interesting and fun to use. The latest patent shows the smartwatch relying on a projector that uses parts of the beam onto the user's skin on the forearm or back of the hand.
The following description has been provided in connection with the patent:
“The gadget includes an image display device configured to display a virtual user interface screen, a camera configured to capture images, and a processor configured to detect a target area from the image captured by the camera.”.
In simple terms, a small projector projects some UI elements onto the user's skin, and a camera tracks and reads the user's interaction with the UI display. The information is then processed by a chipset inside the wearable and converted into actions. Other interesting details include the ability to map locations for the smartwatch, such as landmarks, points of interest, and more. Not only that, but the patent also suggests that the virtual UI technology could also be used for a kind of display, similar to Microsoft's HoloLens.
We hope that future devices released by Samsung will eventually be able to feature such a user interface, but for now, we'll have to rely on watches to check our daily notifications.
