Apple pictures iOS on your wall Apple has filed a patent application for an entirely new type of user interface that combines pico projectors, inter-device communications, and gesture recognition. The filing, "Projected display shared workspaces", envisions users interacting with displays projected by pico projector–equipped devices such as iPhones and iPads …
Devices projecting images and interacting with users have been around for ever. I remember a Doctor Who cartoon in the '70s where a 'dalek' computer intercepted movies from the local theatre and played them on your wall. And as for transferring images between devices with gestures, see Minority Report or Avatar for details.
Apple's going to be granted this patent and some poor company will be sued out of existence when they release something truly innovative.
Trolls.
There is a world of difference between the things shown in films like Avatar which are just smoke and mirrors/slight of hand and developing the technology to make it actually happen.
The details shown in the patent go a long way to make the ideas show on TV/Flim reality.
Taking inspiration from Science fiction stories is nothing new.
As a writer I often dream up things which in this day and age is clearly impossible to design let alone build and make work.
Who knows that in 10 or 15 years it might be possible to actually make the device I've visualised.
Man dreamed for milennia that one day they would fly. Then they did.
Man dreamed for centuries that one day man would walk on the Moon. Then one day they did.
That is progress, human progress.
Apple have put something down on paper and filed a patent application. Someone else will come along soon and take the concepts shown in the application and improve on them. This has been going on since the Stone Age.
and a battery life of more then 5 minutes.
Just about anyone could come up with the rest, and more I'm sure.
Create a projector that will fit in a phone and run for a useful amount of time on the battery and they can have a patent.
For the crap they are trying? Maybe they should try for a job writing a script for a sci-fi TV show.
This post has been deleted by its author
@LeftAlready
I agree. Companies like SmartBoard who have had intercative whiteboards allowing you to move items displayed via a projector will soon have 'stolen' the Jobsian 'innovative' processes. Also, they must watch out because their whiteboards also will then have the look (ie rounded corners) and feel (ooohhh touchy touchy) of Apple devices foisted on them.
Apple should not be granted another patent!
There is one difference. Unlike SmartBoard, Apple's products will likely work. We had SmartBoards at one place I contracted to recently and I think we had meetings where we spent more time trying to get them to work than actually having the meeting. I don't know if we had a Monday Morning board or what ...
Projected touch-sensitive (using either special surfaces or hand or shadow-tracking cameras) displays have been around for ages. Granted, they were projected by regular projectors - but those projectors could be attached to tablet PCs. As to having multiple projectors combining images on the same wall, this too was possible since dual-head graphics cards, and in fact used extensively in certain conference rooms.
Didn't read the whole patent, but it seems to me, that granting it will be yet another coffin in the software patents coffin.
There have already been mobile devices
Such as phones and mp4 players that have built
in projectors.
What, Apple noted that none had patented the obvious?
Their patent is too wide for the display element...oh
it could use anything we currently know about
and ant future alien tech(!)
Why not have it capable of transmitting over the LAN to
a compatible device (networked projector or software client
on the display PC) that would save battery I reckon
And unlike those patent whores at Apple I believe
that sharing ideas leads to innovation and better humanity
The internet wouldn't be here if everyone had patented
their small bits of it!
(though I do ask for recognition by anyone using my ideas ;) )
so basically they are taking a mobile phone idea from 2009
http://uk.ebid.net/for-sale/31-projector-screen-dual-sim-mobile-phone-tv-wap-29662233.htm?from=googlebase
and combining it with a kinect setup. Wow, just so revolutionary! what would we do without apple's innovations.
infact a quick google search shows microsoft already implementing a combined camera & projector that recognizes gestures and a research paper was published in 2009 showing this too: http://mirw09.offis.de/paper/Supporting%20Hand%20Gesture%20Manipulation%20of%20Projected%20Content%20with%20Mobile%20Phones.pdf
I remember reading about pico-projectors in phones back in 2007/8 in the Asian Electronic trade rags, supposed to have shown up by now, must have been a little forestalled by all the Android / iPod battles. So do movies / books / cartoon constitute prior-art, given the idea for this has been around an awful long time.
I remember seeing some patents that had no physical embodiment.
seems to be a disconnect between real life and sci-fi. Dr Who, Minority Report and Avatar did not actually happen - they are fiction.
Like AC says - it's just special effects.
Just because someone once showed something in a cartoon or film doesn't mean it was actually invented at that point - patents require that you actually are able to carry them out. That's what perpetual motion machines are always rejected by the Patent Office
> seems to be a disconnect between real life and
> sci-fi. Dr Who, Minority Report and Avatar did not
> actually happen - they are fiction.
So Apple has a device like this today?
Probably not.
I think it's you that doesn't quite grasp the reality of the situation here.
In truth, Apple's patent is no less of a fantasy than my childhood daydreams. The difference is that Apple will get to shake down the guys that actually make this product real.
How dare [Company X] patent this? I remember [Company Y] showing something similar (at least in my mind, not that I've bothered to read either the article, or the patent) in [Year Z]. What next? Maybe I should patent [some fundamental design pattern in nature, described in pseudo-patent-ese, in an attempt to seem clever and witty].
Don't try to patent this type of comment - there's plenty of prior art. And more on the way... (sigh)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought IDEAS could not be patented !? Apple don't have this IDEA working in practise (obviously, unless they have a nuclear powered iPhone), so how can they be granted a patent for it?
I'm gonna start trawling through sci-fi novels looking for novel ideas and submitting patents for them, (along with the obligatory diagrams done by a teenager from a tech-drawing class) and wait for some clever people to make the ideas practical, then sue the crap out of them.
Didn't motorloa have a pico DLP projector thingy? Samsung did, I'm fairly sure
Gestures... Microsoft Kinect, surely? If not visually sensed then Nintendo Wii for accelerometer sensing.
Communicating between devices? The teletype and a modem.
Seriously if you find a novel method of taking a dump then you should patent it in the USA...
that I am not seeing the obviousness (or prior art) that some of the commeters above are suggesting.
What I am seeing is a file on one device between split into 3 sections with 2 of those sections being sent to other not physically connected and non-similar devices that then project the 3 parts to create one seamless image and that wafting a hand around in front of any part of that reconstructed image (regardless of which unit is projecting it) can control the display. (Sorry for the very long sentence.)
Using the Smartboard example someone mentioned earlier - all the projectors would have to be the same and they would be doing it using a conventional screen-sharing procedure. Whether a Smartboard system would actully work over 3 screens I have some doubt - as keeping them working on 1 screen is quite often a pain in the arras. Calibration drifts all over the place on one screen so.....
It may be possible and someone may have done it. I don't know.
I'm going to file a patent using Minority Report's handwaving scenes as supporting documentation.
Clearly, anyone using their hands to interact with a computerized device, of any kind, in any fashion not requiring a keyboard/mouse/screen, will need to pay me megabucks.
All I need is the lawyer-ese.
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