Samsung’s Note series of Androids has made it clear that the manufacturer is thinking beyond ordinary touch screens when it comes to how we interact with our smartphones and tablets. Could it have aspirations that stretch beyond the stylus, looking to even more advanced ways to control our devices? That’s the sense we’re getting from one Samsung patent application, revealing a camera-based gesture control system.

We just saw the name Samsung Air Gesture pop up in a European trademark filing, but a little sniffing around has unearthed the patent application that seems to describe the technology behind the name.

Samsung’s thinking about a combination of regular cameras and other motion-tracking sensors to follow the user’s hand. Before you start getting too concerned about the toll something like this might have on battery life, the patent describes a number of ways the system could only be activated when you need it, either by an app prompting it to do so, or through manual user configuration. The company talks about using it in everything from TVs to e-readers, but we can’t help but focus-in on the potential this could have for smartphones and tablets. Especially if paired with a tablet with a Surface-like stand, this could open the door for some very Minority-Report-style UI advancements.

We don’t expect to see Air Gesture in any Samsung products in the immediate future, but this is definitely something we’ll be keeping an eye out for at future trade shows.

Source: USPTO