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GooglePatent applicationAR, VR & displaysInterest 6/10

Google patents head-mounted device that tracks hand gestures to save battery

Google describes a head-mounted device that uses a low-power camera to detect when a hand enters its view. Once detected, a higher-resolution camera and processor activate to track specific points on the hand, allowing for touchless interaction without draining the battery.

Why it mattersThis approach could make augmented reality headsets more practical for everyday use by reducing the energy needed to track hand movements.

In the filing’s own words

Touchless interaction with a head-mounted device may require more power than practical. The disclosed techniques address this problem, and others, by describing a sparse keypoint, hand-modeling technique that can reduce the computation and power required for recognizing a dynamic gesture. The power requirements for the touchless interaction may be further reduced by performing this modeling and recognition only when a hand is detected in a field-of-view of the head mounted device and by using a split-computing architecture with a companion device. The disclosed hand modeling and tracking techniques may be further applied to other applications, such as locking a rendered element in an augmented reality environment to the hand of a user.

What exactly they claim (claim 1)

1. A head-mounted device comprising: a camera configured to: capture low-resolution images of a field-of-view; and capture high-resolution images of the field-of-view in response to being triggered by a trigger signal; a first processor configured to: generate the trigger signal in response to a hand being identified in the low-resolution images; and a second processor activated by the trigger signal to: determine a set of keypoints for each high-resolution image corresponding to locations on the hand in the field-of-view.

Facts

Company
Google (GOOGLE LLC)
Official title
HEAD-MOUNTED DEVICE CONFIGURED FOR TOUCHLESS HAND GESTURE INTERACTION
Publication number
US20260267145A1
Application number
19164108
Filed
Apr 6, 2023
Published
Sep 10, 2026
Inventors
7
Claims
22

Classified under

G02B 27/0172 Physics & computingG02B 27/0093 Physics & computingG06F 1/163 Physics & computingG06F 3/017 Physics & computingG06F 3/04815 Physics & computingG06F 3/0482 Physics & computing
Read the full filing (official PDF) ↗ Open in the Patent Tracker

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Summaries are simplified from the filing’s own abstract and first claim. A patent filing is not a product announcement.
Patent data and drawings: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Nebula is not affiliated with or endorsed by the USPTO.