Recently users witnessed the marvelous features of Apple Vision Pro and one feature that blew the mind of users was eye tracking/ gaze tracking technology. Now Apple is looking forward to incorporating this feature with some advancement into its next-gen HomePod. Recently Patently Apple shared the series of patent figures published by the US Patent & Trademark Office in the patent application.
This patent application revealed the ongoing work by Apple which will make the next-gen HomePod come with an integrated camera, gaze controls, and an upgraded version of Siri.
In first figure 8A you can see that the user is looking at HomePod and in 8B he can be seen gazing towards the lamp. HomePod equipped with a camera and an external camera tracks the movement of the user and turns on the lamp and Siri responds to the command with the response “Table lamp turned on”.
In the series of patent figures an external camera mounted on a shelf and one kept in another location can be seen. In the second figure, the user can be seen directly gazing at the stand-up lamp.
In another series of figures, women can be seen making eye contact with the HomePod and requesting the lamp to be turned on. The HomePod responds to the user with the name that shows that Siri acknowledges the user’s request by identifying the user. It means Apple’s next-gen TrueDepth camera will be able to use FaceID. A series of lights located around the top of the HomePod could be there to respond to the command thus representing one color light to show whether a command has been accepted or not.
In the last series of images, a user can be seen using his smartwatch which could be used to increase the intensity of light of the lamp in the room or if we were to say in general, to better control the appliances in the room through an Apple watch. Apple’s patent filing reveals that the device could incorporate one or more depth camera sensors to create a three-dimensional model of an object or say, a user.
As eye tracking/technology came earlier in Vision Pro earlier than expected it won’t be wrong to say that we can see the next-gen HomePod soon in the market.
