Apple is making AirPods Pros safer with new patent
Courtesy: USPTO
Apple has been known for always striving to achieve and deliver very customer focused products, with the purpose of improving its customer’s lives, and in some cases, even “save” those lives. We can certainly cite as an example, the use case of the 79-year-old Veterinarian from Waco, TX who claimed his Apple watch saved his life by detecting an irregular heartbeat.
In an effort to continue its quest of putting the user’s safety first, Apple filed and was granted another patent. The “Contextual Audio System” as labeled by the said patent, is meant to help solve some of the side issues that accompany the use of earphones in general, by assessing the user’s environment and adjusting the audio volume accordingly.
Following the major success of Apple’s original Airpods, the Airpods Pro were released and meant to provide the user with an even better and improved audio experience. Apple included the Active Noise Canceling technology in its Airpods pro model; as one would imagine, this also meant that when activated, the user would be less aware of his environment, as the ANC features would suppress the level of noise in the user’s surroundings.
Courtesy: USPTO
The patent details that the new feature would make use of multiple data points (anywhere from spatial location data to weight distribution), in order to determine whether to turn down the audio volume, or simply shut it down in one or both earbuds, to allow the user to pay attention. It would essentially work similarly to the current Airpods feature that automatically detects whether the earbuds are taken out of the ears and stop/continue to play audio.
Given that this is a whole system working together the Airpods could be connected to an Apple watch, which would be used for its GPS, gyroscope, accelerometer and more in order to properly vet the user’s environment. Note that the patent does not specify which Airpods this will be first to make use of the system, but it does indeed state that it will be for Apple’s wearable audio device application.
While Apple does file for patents on a constant basis in order to claim ownership of many ideas, they do not always make it through – while this is another exciting one by Apple, no one knows when exactly this will be implemented.