Microsoft's Potential Move in Smart Glasses with Windows and Patents for Advanced Features
TapTechNews July 29th news, it seems that Microsoft has not given up on the idea of developing smart glasses running Windows (or Windows Holographic OS) systems. Although the Windows Mixed Reality business is currently in a relatively sluggish state, recently exposed patents show that Microsoft may still be interested in Windows smart glasses with Copilot/AI.
According to WindowsLatest, Microsoft has obtained two patents, namely Composite Posture Estimation for Wearable Computing Devices and Resolution Enhancement in the Spatial Frequency Domain, which were respectively announced by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in February and March of this year. Different from holographic devices such as HoloLens, these smart glasses are more oriented towards ordinary consumers.
TapTechNews noted that the first patent was filed in November 2023 and approved in February this year; the second patent was filed in September 2022 and approved in March this year. In addition, Microsoft has also registered these two patents in Europe.
The patent shows that Microsoft's smart glasses may use a specific version of the Windows system and can accurately track movement and position in non-standard environments. The device collects kinematic data through an inertial measurement unit (IMU), and then uses a machine learning model to estimate the current and past movement speeds to calculate the position of an object. This technology can improve the positioning accuracy of the glasses in environments with insufficient light or dense objects (such as indoors), and no longer overly rely on GPS or visual data.
The second patent involves a new camera system that improves image resolution through lights, lens arrays, and an image engine. The lens array placed on the image sensor array focuses the light of the object being photographed onto the sensor, thereby capturing high-resolution images. Microsoft's this technology is similar to Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses, but aims to achieve better results.
Although patents do not necessarily mean that new products will be launched, the number of AR glasses patents recently applied by the company has increased. Last year, Microsoft also applied for a patent for an internal storage system that extends the battery life of AR glasses and a device patent with a detachable headphone battery. Although Microsoft has good ideas, it is not clear whether it is willing to invest resources to develop a new hardware product line.