Yesterday, Patently Apple posted a report titled "Google invents a new 'Soli' radar-based solution that will recognize a user's hand gestures to control a future Google OS for AR/XR HMD's." The report noted that one of the killer features of Apple Vision Pro is the use of simple hand gestures to control aspects of visionOS. Cameras built into the bottom area of the headset are able to read the specific user's hand gestures to move objects, scroll a webpage, tap on an icon to open an app and so forth as noted in-part below.

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Today we've learnt that Samsung wants to be able to bring a similar technology to their future XR Headset to compete with Apple Vision Pro.

Samsung has confirmed two next-generation image sensors. The one in context most with our report is branded "the ISOCELL Vision 931 which is a global shutter sensor that operates similarly to the human eye. A typical image sensor uses a rolling shutter method that sequentially exposes pixels to light to take pictures, but the global shutter exposes all pixels to light at the same time, similar to the human eye. The advantage is that even fast-moving objects can be photographed clearly without distortion.

It supports a 1:1 ratio resolution (640x640) and smoothly recognizes not only iris recognition but also fine movements such as eye tracking, facial expressions, and hand gestures on display devices mounted on the head, such as XR devices.

The other revelation from Samsung today includes their next-gen ISOCELL Vision 63D for cutting-edge content platforms such as mobile, robots, and extended reality (XR)."  

These touted features appear to aim at similar ones found in Apple Vision Pro.  

The second sensor introduced today is branded the ISOCELL Vizion 63D. Samsung notes that similar to how bats use echolocation to navigate in the dark, ToF sensors measure distance and depth by calculating the time it takes the emitted light to travel to and from an object.

Particularly, Samsung’s ISOCELL Vizion 63D is an indirect ToF (iToF) sensor that measures the phase shift between emitted and reflected light to sense its surroundings in three dimensions. With exceptional accuracy and clarity, the Vizion 63D is ideal for service and industrial robots as well as XR devices and facial authentication where high-resolution and precise depth measuring are crucial.

The ISOCELL Vizion 63D is the industry’s first iToF sensor with an integrated depth-sensing hardware image signal processor (ISP). With this innovative one-chip design, it can precisely capture 3D depth information without the help of another chip, enabling up to a 40% reduction in system power consumption compared to the previous ISOCELL Vizion 33D product.