Amazon is entering in almost every nook and corner of the retail business. Recently, Amazon has started selling its own labeled clothing line and startled everyone. Also, last year, the company had launched a fashion center of its Amazon Echo smart hub called Look.
Seeing all these efforts, it is clear that Amazon is trying to build an image of a successful fashion retailer. Furthering this effort and not stopping its experimentation, it has recently filed a patent application tilted “Blended reality systems and methods”.
This interesting patent discloses a smart mirror which lets the user to dress-up for a party or a wedding or any other event. The patent gives a “blended reality view” to the user on the display device positioned behind a mirror. The device includes a plurality of projectors and cameras around its frame. The projectors are configured to illuminate the front objects. Also, the camera acquires the image data of the user and front object in the mirror.
This invention describes a method to generate a blended reality view by controlling the illumination of the objects in front of the mirror using the projectors. The blended view creates a projected visual representation of the user in different background settings like restaurant, beach. Further, the user will perceive an image based on the light arriving at the user’s eye. Similarly, the blended reality can also provide a visual representation of items like clothes where user perceives that he/she is wearing the visual item.
When Amazon acquired Body Labs last year, a computer vision company that touts to create 3D models of human bodies in motion and also dress them a virtual outfit, by connecting the dots, we had speculated that Amazon was soon going to come up with an innovative product to grab a new market area. However, no one can speculate how well this will be received by the users and how Amazon wants to use it.
