Apple wants to make it easy for you to take augmented reality self-portraits with an iPhone. The company has filed for two patents regarding such a process.
Apple says self-portrait digital photos or “selfies” have become a pop-culture phenomenon. They’re usually taken with a digital camera or smart phone held at arm’s length, pointed at a mirror or attached to a selfie stick to position the camera farther away from the subject and capture the background scene behind the subject. Selfies are often shared on social networking services. Augmented reality (AR) is a live view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are “augmented” by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video or graphics. Apple thinks it would be cool to take “AR selfies.”
Patent number 20190082188 is for “augmented reality self-portraits.” It involves systems, methods, apparatuses and non-transitory, computer-readable storage mediums for generating AR self-portraits or “AR selfies.” Patent number 20190080498 is for “creating augmented reality self-portraits using machine learning.”
Of course, Apple files for — and is granted — lots of patents by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. Many are for inventions that never see the light of day. However, you never can tell which ones will materialize in a real product.
