What a SLAM patent doesn't classify into is as telling as what it does. Samsung's grant US12141993B2 ("Method and device for simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM)," issued November 12, 2024; inventors Zhihua Liu, Donghoon Sagong, Hongseok Lee, Qiang Wang, Yuntae Kim, Kuan Ma) sits entirely in G06T computer-vision codes — structure-from-motion, pose estimation, model-based pose. There is no G05D position-control code, no B25J robot code. This SLAM isn't for a robot. It's for a device.
The mechanism is pure visual SLAM math: G06T 7/579 (structure-from-motion) recovers geometry and camera motion from images, 7/73 and 7/77 estimate and refine pose. The absence of any control or navigation classification means the claim ends at the localization-and-mapping output — it produces a pose and a map, and what consumes them (an AR overlay, a phone feature, a headset) is left open. That's a device-localization framing.
For the control beat, the lesson is that SLAM has bifurcated. The robotics lineage (iRobot, Starship, the G05D-tagged grants) fences mapping-for-navigation; the consumer-device lineage (Samsung here, and the Magic Leap/Snap clusters in the same searches) fences mapping-for-spatial-computing. Same algorithm family, different downstream, different CPC — and the classification is how you tell which fight a patent is in.
From a portfolio angle, Samsung's interest is AR/XR and phones, and a vision-only SLAM grant is a building block for on-device spatial localization across its hardware. The strategic value is in the accumulating density of Samsung's spatial-computing IP, not this single claim — a portfolio that becomes a cross-licensing asset as AR devices proliferate.
Caveats. Visual SLAM and structure-from-motion are among the most prior-arted areas in vision; the grant turns on the specific method in claim 1, not on SLAM itself. The pure-G06T classification tells you the domain (device localization) but not the algorithm. Read the independent claim for the specific SfM or pose-refinement step.
For the file: a device/AR-flavored visual-SLAM grant, classified purely in vision codes. Pull US12141993B2 on PatentBear, read claim 1 for the SfM step, and use the absence of G05D/B25J codes as the marker that distinguishes spatial-computing SLAM from robot-navigation SLAM.