Another Apple smart ring patent has today been granted, which includes both health monitoring and the ability to control other Apple devices.

It suggests that data could be wirelessly sent from the ring for display on devices with screens, including both Vision Pro and smart glasses …

Apple smart ring patents

Current smart rings like the Oura Ring and Samsung’s Galaxy Ring are geared to collecting health and fitness data, as an alternative to an Apple Watch or fitness band.

Apple holds a number of smart ring patents which describe this same type of usage, but many also reference using the ring as an input device for things like AR and VR headsets and glasses.

Latest patent describes both applications

Apple’s latest patent (spotted by Patently Apple) describes health monitoring:

If desired, a device may be operated in isolation. For example a wearable device that is operating in a stand-alone operating mode may perform health monitoring operations. Gathered health data may or may not be shared with other devices.

But also use of the ring to control other Apple devices:

In other scenarios, the system may use one or more electronic devices to gather input from the user to control the operation of one or more electronic devices.

In this type of scenario, a user may, for example, provide input to one device that causes one or more additional devices to take particular actions. A user may, for example, provide touch input, gesture input, force input, or button press input with a first device that is used to control content that is being displayed on a display, audio that is being played with a speaker, and/or haptic output that is being generated with a haptic output device in a second device.

Apple makes specific reference to ‘head-mounted devices.’

In the illustrative example, device is a head-mounted device having head-mounted device housing. Housing may have […] have the shape of a pair of glasses, goggles, a helmet, and/or other housing configured to be worn on a user’s head.

Unclear whether this has been superseded

There can be a very considerable lag between Apple playing with an idea, publication of a patent application, and eventual granting of a patent. We’ve noted before that the idea of using a ring to control headsets may now have been superseded.

Given that the company ultimately succeeded in delivering a device that can be adequately controlled using a combination of eye- and hand-tracking, this particular invention is most likely redundant.

However, it may be that Apple believes a ring could permit more precise control.

For example, circuitry in a ring may be used to capture real-time readings on the location (e.g., the position in three dimensions), orientation (e.g., the angular orientation), and motion (e.g., the change in position as a function of time) of the ring. These activities may be used in controlling devices in the system.

In particular, it may be that an eventual Apple Glasses product – which would have far fewer external cameras – might benefit from gesture information from a ring.

Photo by Adrian Regeci on Unsplash