Report: Google working on Lego screens
Google’s Project Ara has already been creating modular smartphones.
This post was originally published on Mashable.
The top secret experiments at Google’s skunkworks operation, known as Google X, now reportedly include a strange new approach to display technology.
Google’s experimental displays will come in all shapes and sizes and fit together in modular pieces, much like a set of Lego blocks, sources told The Wall Street Journal.
Once connected to each other, the smaller screens will have the ability to form one seamless, larger display.
The effort is said to be led by former MIT professor, Mary Lou Jepsen, Google X’s head of display research, who also founded Pixel Qi, a company focused on developing low-power mobile screens you can read in direct sunlight.
Little else is known about the modular screens at this point, but one source with knowledge of the project did offer a comment as to its development. ”
The big challenge is to electronically, and through software, do the stitching between the seams,” the source told the Journal.
Given the mixed responses to Google’s Nexus smartphones and Chrome notebooks, the notion of more hardware from Google isn’t necessarily packed with promise.
Still, if you imagine a wide array of modular smart screens distributed throughout a hotel or airport, allowing you to connect your small, portable screen to larger stationary ones, all equipped with Google Now, suddenly the modular screen idea gets a lot more interesting.
Despite the success of Google’s overall business and its ambitious approach to innovation, the Google X lab pedigree is no guarantee of mainstream traction for any of its new creations. Google X projects Google Glass and the company’s self-driving car have both garnered a good deal of attention, but neither has managed to gain any significant foothold as a commercial venture.
A Google spokesperson declined to comment when contacted by Mashable for comment on the report.
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