The upcoming Apple Watch band will detect finger movements. A pair of electrodes and the Apple Watch, as if by magic, will be able to detect muscle movement and the smallest electrical activity to recognize practically any hand gesture; the revolutionary strap under study at Apple’s laboratories would thus allow the watch to know when you are lazing a little too much or perhaps the exact moment in which a workout begins.
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We talk about it in a new patent filed recently, entitled Electrodes For Gesture Recognition, which explains how this system is quite effective where others fail miserably. “Hand gestures can be detected by tactile sensors or by proximity sensors integrated into a panel” specially designed, “however these types of sensors generally have a limited detection range”, which means that hand gestures must be performed near the panels.
Apple says that gestures could also be tracked by one or more cameras, but even here there are limitations related to the field of view, in addition to the fact that this technology requires “complex hardware and image processing”; there are also portable devices such as “wands, controllers and gloves”, but they are not used frequently and therefore, socially speaking, are less acceptable.
It’s nice to see that Apple is concerned with finding “socially acceptable” solutions: when the Apple Watch came out it might even have seemed more discreet to glance at the watch rather than take out the phone, but objectively speaking no one has ever managed to do it without being noticed.
How does it work?
In any case, this new solution would allow you to shake or stretch your hand to activate the electrodes and therefore recognize the movements of the individual fingers in a practical and non-invasive way. It should be noted that there is already an accessibility feature in the Apple Watch that lets you control some functions by clenching your fist (remember the trick for using it underwater?) but here we go towards something more refined: for one thing, you could turn on a light simply by flicking the thumb as in the gesture of triggering a lighter.
Apple explains in detail how it is possible to install these electrodes, passing precisely through the strap which would then communicate with the case via pogo pin. The patent, credited to seven inventors, remains under study for the moment so it will be necessary to see if and when the technology will really end up on users’ wrists.