Apple Wants to Hire 3D Display Software Engineer
Posted on: 06/17/2012 12:43 AM

Apple made a job posting on April 12, 2012 for an iOS Software Engineer, specifically to "strengthen its multi-view stereo research group." Interesting...

The position calls for some pretty heavy guns. Someone with a Ph.D. to be exact. I don't about you, but if I was going to invest that much money into an employee I would be planning something really important. The job listing also looks for someone with experience in Multi-view stereo and 3D reconstruction, Inpainting of occluded geometry and texture data, SLAM, Mesh texturing techniques, Large scale bundle adjustment, and Cameras and surfaces in a 3D environment. Right off the bat, it looks like Apple is getting very serious about 3D displays. We already know about Apple's glasses free 3D display patent, so the technology could be very close at hand.

But besides 3D displays, the need of experience with SLAM is very interesting. SLAM is an acronym for 'simultaneous localization and mapping,' which is a technology that uses cameras to create real-time 3D renderings of a space (your kitchen, for example). Here's a video to show you what I mean:



This video shows the technology being used on an unmanned robot; presumably for use with Military and Police applications. Researchers have also been using Xbox Kinect cameras to make hand-held SLAM cameras, so maybe there is some weird Apple-Microsoft rivalry going on. Apple could be creating a similar device to the Kinect, but how would they integrate that into their product line? What does Apple want to do with SLAM on iOS? Honestly, I have no idea. My best guess would be an iPhone that could take a real-time 3D image of a room and also display it in glasses-free 3D.

One last hint we get from this job posting is the rumors that the infamous Apple TV would run on a version of iOS, and the job is for an iOS position. Maybe gesture control for your TV is in the works!

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