A new patent application from Microsoft shows how its HoloLens glasses could help you easily find small items, like car keys.
More generally, the patent describes a system that can monitor the status of objects without instructions from users, maintaining information about something that is important to your life.
The basic idea behind the patent is pretty simple. HoloLens has cameras that can make a spatial map of a room, and the computer vision technology can identify or track specific objects in an image. So, for example, if you put your keys on a table, HoloLens could hypothetically detect them through the camera and silently note their location. When you want to leave the house, it could give you the last known location of your keys, even if they've been covered by a newspaper or slipped under a couch cushion.
At the moment it seems like a very inefficient way to find your keys. You would have to wear the smart glasses all the time, which is currently incredibly inconvenient. Also, if you drop your keys somewhere without looking at them, the system wouldn't be able to register their movement. Let alone in a future with 24/7 augmented reality we might not even have keys.
Perhaps what's really interesting isn't the idea of HoloLens detecting an object. It's HoloLens learning what items are important to you and choosing to track them. To be clear, you could define objects: for example, a traveler telling HoloLens to track their passport. Or it could even be food in your fridge reminding you what to buy when you go to the supermarket hours later.
And if you want to take it a step further, this technology could start finding patterns in your every movement that are uniquely identified with you, something like fingerprints. In addition, Microsoft sees a near future where we will somehow have one or more cameras on us all the time that will record constantly. It may not be the bulky and uncomfortable HoloLens but don't forget that this is a patent that simply secures the patent for future profits.
