The next HomePod should be able to recognize gestures and faces. This and much more is revealed in a recent Apple patent.
A patent application granted by Apple by the US Patent and Trademark Office shows how good the future HomePod could be. The word HomePod does not appear in the patent itself, but it describes a product that matches the Apple HomePod down to the last detail. The description shows that the HomePod will be able to recognize more than just voices in the future. According to this, the smart Siri speaker will be able to be controlled using gestures and respond visually via built-in LEDs. The LEDs themselves would form a kind of display with touch - these are freely configurable. Special 3D sensors would enable gesture control. The patent also shows that the inventors of this technology are people who work at PrimeSense. This company developed Microsoft's Kinect sensor at the time and was bought by Apple in 2013.
facial recognition 2.0
The Apple patent also describes facial recognition. Accordingly, the HomePod should be able to recognize people in its vicinity. This technology could serve as biometric authentication to distinguish between requests from individual users - thus the HomePod of the future could also manage multiple user profiles. Furthermore, the HomePod with the extended Face ID should be able to record various other data. This includes, among other things, heart rate and ambient light. This is not the first patent in which Apple mentions gesture control. An Apple patent appeared in August 2018 that gesture control on Macs describes. A HomePod with such features would be an absolute asset. Nevertheless, patents should always be treated with caution. It is not uncommon for many such ideas to never make it into finished products.
