14 DAY TRIAL // Google has received a patent filed back in 2011 that should help people avoid collision. The invention could be used for Google Glass users who might be distracted by what they are looking at on the device.
The technology doesn’t set off any alarms or buzz the Glass users, but it will de-emphasize one of the displayed virtual objects on the screen. This should help warn the user thatthey’re about to walk into someone or something, be it another person, a wall or a car.
This is done by gathering data from Google Glass’ sensors and calculating the distance between you and any obstacles in your way.
It may sound absurd, but it’s not really all that crazy. Google Glass has few users right now, but once it goes mainstream there will be many more. It takes a while to get used to the device, so at least in the beginning, you could easily get distracted.
In a few years’ time, it’s possible that a lot more people will use this kind of wearable gadget, so the type of prevention technology like the one patented by Google could really come in handy.
After all, it was just the other day that a woman, distracted by her phone while checking Facebook, walked off a pier. So perhaps this should also be applied to smartphones, although that’s less likely. However, it could really come in handy for those self-driving cars that Google has in the works.
If it’s one thing you can’t say about Google is that it doesn’t innovate. And as much as the company tries to fight off patent trolls, it has been filing for a lot of new patents of its own. The difference, however, is that Google rarely uses such documents to drag some company or another into court. Furthermore, the things that Google's engineers come up with really deserve to be patented.