Samsung’s latest C-Lab projects embrace augmented and virtual reality

Samsung created C-Lab (that’s Creative Lab) half a decade ago as an attempt to incubate employee creativity within the larger confines of its corporate culture. Among the decided benefits of its place as a giant among consumer electronics companies is the ability to showcase some of the more creative spinoffs at some of the world’s biggest tech trade shows — which it’s continued to do like clockwork.

Past events have featured some fairly wacky products, like a fitness tracking belt, and last month at CES, the company was mostly focused on the future of skincare. A new quartet of projects set to premier at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week, however, looks to be the most interesting output from the in-house incubator thus far.

Relúmĭno utilizes the company’s low-cost Gear VR headset to improve book reading and TV viewing for the visually impair, leveraging an app that enhances text and visuals, while “remap[ing] blind spots by displacing images and uses an Amlser grid chart to correct distorted images caused by metamorphopsia.”

VuildUs is another VR solution that seems fairly similar to some systems being utilized by interior designers, building a virtual model of a user’s home in which they can insert furniture to see how it would fit in an existing space. Ditto for traVRer, which, in spite of a fun name sounds like a number of VR-based travel solutions that offer up the experience of visiting famous places around the world.

Monitorless, meanwhile, utilizes a pair of clunky glasses that look not entirely unlike Microsoft’s Hololens, which content to a PC of smartphone via WiFi, replacing the need to look directly at a monitor, while bringing AR and VR functionality to the process for added immersion and gaming applications.

All of the products will be on display next week in Barcelona.