Olympus has consistently launched pretty hot concepts and has kept their innovation track strong with 76 patents so far in 2007. Would getting into digital display eye wear be that much of a stretch from their experience in digital cameras? Well, they have been thinking about it.
Actually, Olympus hasn’t been the only ones dabbling in this nascent area.
Olympus received a patent for quite an interesting set of glasses which includes:
the head-mounted display apparatus of the present invention comprises: an angle detector to detect the tilting angle of the head of an observer; a display portion to display a predetermined image in such a manner that the image is superimposed on an image of the external environment, the display portion for switching a display-state in which the image is displayed and a non-display-state in which the image is not display, corresponding to the tilting angle of the observer’s head detected by the angle detector.
Combining the ability to integrate images along with head motion could build on the impact of the WiiMote, but with a whole new ‘gaming in the real world’ spin.
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Another patent related to digital viewing is IBM’s two inventions covering secured viewing between glasses and a public monitor device whereby the monitor and glasses synchronize on a decryption sequence making the viewed data unreadable by others (list of related patents).
While these concepts differ from stereoscopy, the two areas cross heavily on optics knowledge making it a prime development arena for digital camera players, like Olympus and Pentax, that are willing to stretch to display more of a 3D world.
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