Google Reportedly Working On Displays Which Could Be Assembled Into One Massive Screen

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
A top-secret project rumored to be in the works at Google would allow people to piece together small, modular screens into a larger television or monitor capable of displaying a single, seamless image.
As Rolfe Winkler and Alistair Barr of the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, the individual screen pieces could be assembled like building blocks. While the reporters note that little is known about the project, in theory it would allow customers to create TVs or monitors in a variety of different shapes and sizes.
While Google declined their request for comment, Winkler and Barr report that the One Laptop Per Child co-founder and former MIT professor Mary Lou Jepsen is heading up the project. Jepsen, they noted, has co-founded three display-related tech startups, including Pixel Qi which specializes in low-power screens viewable in direct sunlight. She currently runs the display division of Google’s advanced product laboratory, Google X.
“Among the problems that the group is trying to solve, the people familiar with the project said, is how to make display modules that are ‘seamless’ so that people looking at a giant screen wouldn’t see the borders between the modules,” Winkler and Barr reported. “The project remains at an early stage and has been kept secret, even within Google, partly because the technical challenges are as large as the planned screens, one of the people said.”
One of the Wall Street Journal’s sources said the developers are attempting to “do the stitching between the seams” both electronically and through software, and that Google X is looking to recruit more experts to address the problem. Gecko Design, a mechanical engineering and product design company which the research lab acquired by the Mountain View, California-based firm in August, could be brought in to assist with the project.
In August, Gecko Chief Executive Jacques Gagné said that his company, which was also a part of One Laptop Per Child, had been working with Google X on an undisclosed project since 2013. He said that the firm was working with Google X on multiple high-tech projects, but declined to confirm the modular display was one of them.
“The displays are said to be able to show different information per module, or via a sub-sect of monitors. If you had 20 monitors linked, you could have 20 different screens showing 20 different things,” said Slashgear‘s Nate Swanner. “You could also have 20 screens showing 5 things via 4 groups of monitors, or however you’d like to split it up.”
“The reason or scope of the project isn’t known, so it’s not clear why Google is interested in the display-linking tech,” he added, humorously suggesting that such a display could “come in handy on Sundays in the Fall and Winter,” during football season. The actual reason why Google X, which is the laboratory that has given the world Google Glass and the company’s driverless car, would be working on such a display, however, is unknown.
However, as BGR’s Jacob Siegal noted, TVs that could be assembled like LEGO blocks could be usable for a variety of different locations, including schools, office conference rooms and homes. It’s a novel idea, but as NPD DisplaySearch research director Riddhi Patel pointed out, the device would probably need to be affordable and easy to install in order to attract the attention of the average consumer.
—–