You may soon be able to take augmented reality ‘selfies’ with your iPhone, as Apple has been granted a patent (number 11,394,898) for “augmented reality self-portraits.”
About the patent
Self-portrait digital photos or “selfies” have become very popular. 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.
There’s a growing interest in augmented reality (AR) — 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 apparently wants you to be able to apply AR to selfies taken with the iPhone.
Summary of the patent
Here’s Apple’s abstract of the patent: “Systems, methods, apparatuses and non-transitory, computer-readable storage mediums are disclosed for generating AR self-portraits or “AR selfies.” In an embodiment, a method comprises: capturing, by a first camera of a mobile device, live image data, the live image data including an image of a subject in a physical, real-world environment; receiving, by a depth sensor of the mobile device, depth data indicating a distance of the subject from the camera in the physical, real-world environment; receiving, by one or more motion sensors of the mobile device, motion data indicating at least an orientation of the first camera in the physical, real-world environment; generating a virtual camera transform based on the motion data, the camera transform for determining an orientation of a virtual camera in a virtual environment; and generating a composite image data, using the image data, a matte and virtual background content selected based on the virtual camera orientation.”
