Well, Samsung. I appreciate your willingness to innovate with weird stuff and patent the most strambotic devices, but this…what the hell is this? It is just getting ridiculous.

(Image credit: Let's Go Digital)

According to Dutch technology blog and relentless patent prospector Let’s Go Digital, Samsung has applied to patent a 3D display with a 3D user interface that can be connected to a smartphone.

Why? Why not, my friends. Why the hell not.



(Image credit: Let's Go Digital)

According to Let’s Go Digital, the “three-dimensional display device and user interfacing method therefor” U.S. Patent and Trademark Office filing is capable of “displaying virtual 3D objects” and can connect to tablets or phones.

Nothing out of the ordinary until you get to the way you interact with the TV.

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First, the thingamajig’s interface would be entirely controlled by waving your hands, a la Minority Report (of course).

Then there’s the fact that the device will be able to capture any physical object you put in front of it, making. 3D image out of it that you can then seen in its virtual version. The patent also describes how the interface reacts to different objects, as it can recognize them.



(Image credit: Let's Go Digital)

This may be a technology that Samsung may implement on their TVs, so users can interact by moving their hands and making gestures. It may also be a technology that could find its way into retail applications, allowing users to interact with real products in a shop.

Whatever the application may be, it’s surprising that SamsunG is still trying to explore this path after 3D technology took the TV world by storm in 2010 — just to fail miserably to gain any traction.

But they are. Last December, for example, we already saw their patent for a Star Wars-like phone display capable of projecting 3D holograms that could be seen with the naked eye. Perhaps this is all part of the same overall direction. If it finally gets holograms working, the company is going to need a way to control them and have them interact with the physical world around us.