Amazon's plan for how to use light beams to display augmented reality scenes.
Amazon’s plan for how to use light beams to display augmented reality scenes.
Amazon has built up a nice little collection of devices at its Palo Alto, Calif.-based hardware division, Lab126. And like many big tech companies, the Seattle tech giant is now exploring ways to tackle the emerging field of augmented reality, according to conversations with a Lab126 employee and recent patent filings. AR generally refers to the projecting of computer-generated images or objects into the real world.
Recent patents awarded to Amazon show a way of bringing this technology into the living room. Unlike many others efforts in AR, it looks like Amazon doesn’t want to rely on any sort of headgear. One patent describes a way of using light beams to display AR scenes in a room and to track what’s going on in an environment. The patent describes it as such: “A room equipped with computerized projection and imaging systems that enable presentation of images on various objects within the room to facilitate user interaction with the images and/or objects.”
Another patent describes a way of tracking objects in an environment for interacting with the computer through gesture. This would allow a user to have control of the AR scene through body gestures.
It appears that Amazon has been working on much of this technology through an entity called Rawles LLC, said Mikhail Avady of legal technology firm SmartUp Legal, who surfaced these patents. Avady said that Amazon had acquired most of these patents from the holding company last month. Most of the people listed as inventors on the patents from Rawles are Lab126 employees. For example, one of the people listed on the patents, Ning Yao, has been working at Lab126 since 2010, according to her LinkedIn profile. She wrote in her LinkedIn profile that she’s working on bringing computer vision and image sensing technologies to consumer products.
Jeff Bezos has shown some interest in augmented reality, which was featured most recently on the company’s failed Fire Phone. According to one Lab 126 engineer FORBES talked to, the phone project was originally supposed to have more augmented reality features than it launched with.

Other tech giants have also been taking an interest in augmented reality. Earlier this year, Microsoft MSFT +1.82% announced HoloLens, an AR headset.
An Amazon spokesperson could not be reached for immediate response.