We’ve seen a few zany patent reveals over the years from the Nintendo Research & Development team, but this latest is something entirely new all together. Nintendo originally filed this patent back in August of 2014, but the details for it were just published yesterday. The concept for the device is a piece of hardware that is capable of detecting objects. It uses mirrors and cameras to detect the proximity of objects and it seems to have some sort of projector capability.
While the first image is pretty ambiguous in its meaning, the second clearly shows amiibo-like figures placed next to the device. We can only guess at what the intent is, but it means that Nintendo was working on a device that can utilize more than one amiibo at a time, or recognize them separately from the NFC chip located on the bottom of each figure.
What uses could you see for an item scanner?
