Trends member Neer Sharma has been rounding up the best corporate patents every week for his must-read newsletter Patent Drop.
Here are recent findings:
PayPal is souping up AR shopping
With this new patent, fintech giant PayPal wants to facilitate payments within augmented reality (AR) glasses:
“Imagine you’re wearing AR glasses as you walk down the street. A stranger passes you by in a cool, pastel-painted, vintage bicycle.
As you look at it, a message appears in your AR glasses – “this is for sale for $100!”. You think to yourself – “wow, this completes my nomad, hipster garments. I gotta buy it”. And through your AR glasses, you make an offer on the bicycle.”
Ford with a VERY forward-looking patent
In anticipation of a world where car sharing is ubiquitous, Ford has a patent for “odor mitigation”.
The automaker is offering up 2 potential solutions:
- An e-nose (AKA electrochemical nose) uses sensors to detect certain scents. It then deals with the smell via a filtration or air freshener system.
- Another option is using something called the human nose. Riders are asked to flag offending smells, which the odor mitigation system can deal with the next time it senses it.
The next frontier of Amazon’s convenience store
Amazon’s convenience store (Go) already lets customers enter, shop, and exit without using checkout. Off-the-shelf items are automatically tallied via computer vision and AI.
A recent patent from the company adds a new wrinkle: it wants to let customers do “no checkout” with customized orders like a made-to-order deli sandwich.
Sounds delicious (and convenient).
