MANILA, Philippines — U.S. tech giant Google, now awash with millions of cash due to its booming income, has filed a patent application on a user interface that allows users to transmit computer commands through mere hand gestures.
In its application to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office last Oct. 15 innocuously titled “Hand gestures to signify what is important,” Google sought to own first dibs on a technology that enables people to execute commands on a wearable computer device, such as the much-touted Google glass.
In a drawing sheet, the company illustrated that the technology may be used to grab video stills by making hand gesture of a heart over the video.
“In accordance with example embodiments, hand gestures can be used to provide user input to a wearable computing device, and in particular to identify, signify, or otherwise indicate what may be considered or classified as important or worthy attention or notice,” the company said.
The technology may be seen to complement the further maturity of its Google glass device, which now allows users to record videos and snap pictures through voice commands.
In its patent filing, Google indicated that the hand-gesture technology will be used on a “wearable computing device, which could include a head-mounted display (HMD) and a video camera.”
“Particular hand gestures could be used for selecting portions of a field of view of the HMD, and generating images from selected portions,” Google said.
“The HMD could then transmit the generated images to one or more applications in a network server communicatively connected with the HMD, including a server of server system hosting a social networking service,” Google added.
This is not the first time, however, that Google toyed with the idea of a hand-gesture operated technology, only its first one was an April Fool’s prank. Google Motion, publicized in April 1, 2011, reportedly allows users to use gmail with body movements.
Google has not released an official statement about the hand-gesture technology and it may also be possible that the patent application may just be an attempt to ward off patent trolls
With the company’s balance sheet swimming in a sea of liquidity, due to a steady stream of ad revenues that propped up its third quarter income by 36 percent over last year to $3 billion, Google has been more and more ambitious in pursuing frontier technology, or “moonshots” as the company calls it.
The Internet search company even has a dedicated facility called Google X specifically tasked to develop and study the viability of these projects, which right now include a driverless car, a high-altitude helium balloon that will beam down broadband internet to remote areas, and the Google glass.
The company is also studying how to extend the human lifespan through its biotech company Calico.
source: interaksyon.com