After an attempt by Disney to make lightsaber a real thing, Intel gave a shot to make real world magic wands. The recent patent by Intel reveals this chipmaker’s plans to make a magic wand that will make you feel like an actual wizard.
Even though the lightsaber was a farfetched dream and was really not what we expected but, Intel’s magic wand is pretty much real and not just a wooden stick unlike many traditional wands out in the market.
Of course you’ll not be able to lift quills in the air or cast spells, doing that isn’t fun anyway, but you can do much more creative stuff.
Intel’s magic wand will let you control your smarthome gadgets with just a wave of hands, or by actually reciting spells. The wand can sense your gestures and listen to your voice to turn you into a “wizard”.
The most interesting thing is that, like in Harry Potter series, this wand will be faithful to its owner. To confirm you are who you claim to be, it utilizes your fingerprints and heartbeats to make sure nobody else uses your wand.
So, wave your magic wand and utter “mutato alveo” while sitting on your couch to change the TV channel or say “Lumos” to turn on the lights (yes, I used Latin however, actual wand may accept English commands :).
Or you could say “accio, servum meum” to call your Roomba. The patent also mentions using magic wand as a remote with gaming consoles and PC –possibilities are infinite.
Now, you might be thinking how this wand is going to work? Pretty simple, it will use your smartphone as a beacon to “execute spells”. You can set custom commands for different tasks (changing TV channels, controlling lights, etc.) and wand will forward the instructions through your phone to execute those.
To simplify things, I can say that Intel has patented a remote control that uses gestures and voice commands to control your smart home gadgets. It records your hand movements and voice to figure out what you want it to do.
It then forwards those instructions to your smartphone where an assistant does the real magic. As internet of things is expanding and Intel is among the most active contributors, this magic wand just added another product into its IoT line.
This is closest we can go to a real magical wand at the moment and I think this is pretty cool already. Also, as the idea in the patent is not that difficult to turn into a product, you can expect this magic band to hit the shelves soon.
Want to know what magical thing Sony is planning to do? Making your phone a vampire to suck battery juice out of other smartphones, a true wireless charging.