For all the portable convenience that smart devices offer today, it’s not hard to imagine that one day in the future, kids might be overheard saying: “Can you believe they used to have to take their phone out of their pocket to use it?” or “Yeah, and they had to actually touch it to make it work!” That future might not be too far in the offing if a recently filed patent from Apple becomes a reality. Patent application number 20210072833 was filed by the corporation on March 11 for a device fitted with a series of electromagnetic sensors, “wherein the device housing defines a closed ring configured to receive a finger.” In other words, a smart ring.
This isn’t the first smart ring to be conceived. The Oura smart ring has been capturing activity and sleep data for a few years now, and the McLear Payment Ring promises to let consumers pay with just a tap of their finger jewelry, although it has yet to be released in the United States.
Nor is this Apple’s first patent for a smart ring. In 2019, the company filed a patent for a ring with an embedded touchscreen. Even further back, in 2015, it filed another one for the finger-wrapping tech.
The new patent hints at a ring that’s quite a bit different than those. The previous patents seemed to be aiming at a ring that would function like the Apple Watch, allowing users to control actions on their phone from the ring. This time, Apple has come up with the idea of embedding the ring (or rings) with “a self-mixing interferometry (SMI) sensor-based gesture input system.” In non-patent speak, it’s a ring that would be able to sense its position in space in relation to other devices, like an iPad or the Apple Pencil.
Described by The Optical Society as a “universal yardstick to measure almost everything,” SMI technology sends laser beam pulses out into the world and then, by measuring how long it takes for those beams to return, measures its own orientation in space. The patent hints that such a device could link up with Apple’s forthcoming virtual reality headset, or possibly its further-off mixed-reality glasses. As the filing states: “In augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) and mixed reality (MR) applications, as well as other applications, it can be useful to track a user’s finger movement(s) and/or identify a user’s gestures (e.g., gestures made with one or more fingers, a hand, an arm, etc.).”
The patent also shows an illustration of a hand holding an Apple Pencil, showing that these rings could work with that device to transmit gestures made in the air to the screen of an iPad or a MacBook. Additionally, the patent shows multiple rings on a user’s fingers, which could clear the way for in-air gestures for more everyday tasks like pinching, zooming or swiping to different screens.
Of course, a patent is just that – a patent. Whether or not the rings will come to fruition is truly anybody’s guess. Although seeing that Apple has been sniffing around the idea for over five years now, it certainly seems like it’s a question of “when” rather than “if.”
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