It’s been a long time coming, but today Amazon can say it holds the patent for a retailing system that can take custom orders for 3-D printed items, get them made, and have them sent out for delivery or picked up by the customer.
Tag: Amazon
How would that glitzy cocktail dress look on you when you’re on the dance floor at the GeekWire Gala? Now Amazon has a patented technology for that: a blended-reality display that puts your image into a virtual scene, and puts you in a virtual version of the dress.
The magic mirror would be a step up from Amazon’s Echo Look camera, which is currently being marketed on an invitation-only basis as a fashion “style assistant.”
Echo Look lets you take your picture with the assistance of Amazon’s voice-commanded Alexa AI assistant, and then produces blended-reality photos that show you wearing the clothes you’ve picked out.
The blended-reality display, described in a patent published today, relies on a system of cameras, projectors, displays, mirrors and lights that can add layers of pixels to your moving image on a real-time basis.
Is “Amazon Prime Air” no longer a factor? Not quite, but if you’re reading the tea leaves in today’s post-holiday recap from Amazon, you’ll notice that the online retailing giant’s fleet of Boeing 767 cargo delivery jets is now called “Amazon Air.”
The references pop out in the context of how much stuff Amazon delivered during the holiday season. For example, it’s nice to know that between Thanksgiving and Christmas, Amazon Air “carried enough packages to equal over a billion Echo Dots” — which would work out to 360 million pounds, assuming that each Dot weighs 5.7 ounces. Or should we be talking volume? That’d be in the range of 8 million cubic feet.
The post-holiday recap also confirms that Amazon Air’s fleet currently comprises 32 Boeing 767 planes, with some (but not all) bearing the Prime Air livery that made its debut back at 2016’s Seafair festival in Seattle. Twenty planes are operated by Air Transport International. Twelve more are under Atlas Air’s aegis, with another eight undergoing conversion to cargo freighters for operation by Atlas.
Most inventors look for ways to make their machines more robust, but Amazon has won a patent for delivery drones that fall apart more easily.
Why? For safety reasons.
The patent application, filed last year and published last week, lays out a concept that calls for an automated “fragmentation controller” to be included on the drone.
That controller, analogous to a flight controller, works out and updates a backup plan for breaking the drone apart if the flight is disrupted for some reason.
As the drone goes about its business, onboard systems and the drone fleet’s mission control center would be on the watch for potentially hazardous conditions, such as inclement weather or equipment malfunctions.
If the drone gets into a jam, the fragmentation controller could be activated to go through an optimized self-destruct sequence. Pieces of hardware would drop off or be ejected based on the terrain that’s surrounding the unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, when it gets into trouble.
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FAA lays out process for drone progress
The Federal Aviation Administration today followed up on a White House mandate to speed progress toward drone deliveries by laying out a streamlined plan for approving more advanced operations.
Many of those operational features — such as flying beyond a drone operator’s visual line of sight, night flights and flying over people — are considered crucial for the drone delivery schemes being tested by Amazon as well as Google’s parent company and other ventures.
A Native American tribe and a small computer company have reportedly sued Amazon and Microsoft, claiming that they’re infringing on patents relating to supercomputer technology.
The lawsuits are the latest twists in a relatively new strategy under which companies assign patents to tribes that can in turn assert sovereign immunity to short-circuit review procedures.
Reuters and CNBC reported that the suits were filed today in federal district court in Virginia by the Saint Regis Mohawk Tribe and SRC Labs. SRC, a company founded in 1996 by the late supercomputer pioneer Seymour R. Cray, assigned the patents in question to the tribe in August.
Amazon’s inventors have come up with a computer-based system that makes use musical transformations to authenticate a whole group of users — and block access if anyone strikes a false note.
The concept, which is called chained authentication using musical transforms, is the subject of a patent that was sought back in 2014 and published today.
Here’s how it could work: When a pre-specified group requests access to protected data, the computer service holding that data sends out a “musical seed” to the first user on the group’s list. This seed can be an actual melody, or it can be a series of seemingly garbled tones.
The first user runs the tones through a transformation — for example, changing notes from sharps to flats, or bringing the melody down a fifth. Different users apply their own assigned algorithms to twist and turn the melody, and the last user on the list sends the audio file back to the service for authentication.
Amazon has unveiled its first waterproof Kindle Oasis e-reader, which takes its place on the top end of the Kindle spectrum with a list price starting at $249.99.
The upgraded Oasis boasts a 7-inch illuminated screen, a long-life battery that can take on a full charge in less than two hours, and IPX8-level waterproofing that’s designed to protect the device even if it’s dunked in a bathtub or a lake.
The device is rated to survive immersion in up to 6 feet (2 meters) of fresh water for up to 60 minutes.
Amazon is also highlighting the 7-ounce (194-gram) device’s slim profile, tapering to a 3.4mm display, and the fact that it has a built-in Audible app that lets you listen to audiobooks over Bluetooth headphones or speakers.
In its quest to find the next “Game of Thrones,” Amazon Studios is reportedly adding three science-fiction series to its list of production prospects, including Seattle author Neal Stephenson’s “Snow Crash.”
The two other projects mentioned in Variety’s report would be based on Larry Niven’s “Ringworld” and Greg Rucka’s “Lazarus” comic book.
Variety quoted from an internal email in which studio head Roy Price said he was “bullish” about the lineup emerging for 2018 and 2019. “The biggest takeaway is that once again, our overall content investment is increasing, which will allow us to continue to meet customer demand around the world for high quality and engaging programming,” Price was quoted as saying.
We reached out to Amazon, but the company says there’s nothing to report beyond what’s been written.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has said the Alexa voice-activated AI assistant was inspired by the talking computer on “Star Trek,” so it only makes sense that Alexa is saluting the latest incarnation of the Star Trek saga.
“Star Trek: Discovery” premieres Sept. 24 on CBS All Access, and in the show’s honor, Amazon has added a few tricks that Echo, Dot and other Alexa-enabled devices can show off.