Nokia eyes wearables after patenting gaze and hand tracking glasses

Wearable technology is likely to be the next big thing and Nokia has sure hinted in the past that the company was interested in venturing into this field. While the mobile phone manufacturer hasn’t revealed much about its plans, Nokia has lately been on a spree of filing wearable-related patents (such as a patent for a see-though display and eye-movement tracking via a sensor).

The latest patent filing indicates that Nokia is looking into an interaction system for a near-to-eye display with the combination of a hand gesture detector and a gaze tracker (NED). It uses a camera to track the gaze of an eye, and uses a second camera to track hand gestures when movement of the eye is very slight or null.

“The invention relates to a method, comprising tracking the gaze of an eye of a user by a first camera, wherein a position of the gaze determines a place for the cursor on the screen of a near-to-eye display (NED), wherein the movement of the gaze is configured to move the cursor on the screen and when the movement of the gaze is detected to be still or moving only slightly; observing a gesture of one hand of the user by a second camera, and executing a further operation if at least one gesture of the hand is detected,” the patent filing describes.

This multi-modal interaction system looks very similar to Google Glass – a wearable computing device that Google launched back in 2012. With a head-mounted display, Google Glass makes it incredibly easy to take snapshots, videos and then share them with your friends or on favored websites. You can also read your emails, know about the weather and perform Google searches with it. 

You can find all about the new technology here. No word on when or if Nokia plans on rolling out this product.