A camera on the headmounted device scans and recognises the item being liked and stores its details in a list of favourites, which can then be shared. The patent is called ‘Hand gestures to signify what is important’ and was made public on Wednesday. In one diagram, hands shaped as a heart are shown in front of a painting, while another shows the hand gesture being used in front of building sign. Google explains in the patent: ’Hand gestures can be used to provide user input to a wearable computing device, and in particular to identify, signify, or otherwise indicate what may be considered or classified as important or worthy of attention or notice. ‘A wearable computing device, which could include a headmounted display (HMD) and a video camera, may recognise known hand gestures and carry out particular actions in response. ‘Particular hand gestures could be used for selecting portions of a field of view of the HMD, and generating images from the selected portions.’ In simple terms, a user would frame any real-world object with a heart-shaped hand gesture and a built-in camera would scan the frame and ‘like’ the highlighted product or location. Google could also expand the type and number of hand gestures the technology recognises to include thumbs-up gestures, pointing, forming an L (for like) with a thumb and forefinger or circling items with a loop. The ‘wearable computing device’ likely refers to Google’s Glass technology, yet the patent’s wording suggests it could be applied to any form of headmounted wearable technology. It is also thought the technology could use, or build upon, Google’s existing Goggles app that lets people take photos of items and find them online. This includes scanning products in shops, to compare online prices, for example, or scanning landmarks to find a location on a map.
