A few of the big trends coming to the tech sector over the next five years include electric vehicles (semi and fully autonomous), a wide range of foldable phones and tablets (hybrid tablet-notebooks) and advanced eyewear (Mixed Reality HMD, Smartglasses) and their respective controlling device accessories, such as smart rings.
Apple has a number of smart ring and other types of finger devices on record. Here are just a few of them: 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07 and more. Google and Samsung are working on similar devices. Last summer we covered a Samsung smart ring patent and in today’s report, we cover Samsung’s latest patent filing for a smart ring titled “Wearable Device and Method for Controlling Same.”
Samsung’s patent relates to a wearable device (smart ring) worn on a finger and a method of controlling a wearable device worn on a finger, and more particularly, to a device and method for identifying a contact body part when a wearable device is worn on a finger to input a signal in a contact manner
One embodiment in the patent filing may provide a wearable device and a method capable of controlling two or more operations even when a touch input of the same pattern is received, and controlling various operations in a limited touch area by matching different operations for different types of body parts touching the wearable device worn on a finger of a user.
A method of controlling a wearable device worn on a finger of a user may include sensing a contact by a second finger of the user through an outer surface electrode positioned on an outer circumferential surface of the wearable device worn on a first finger of the user, measuring an impedance between the outer electrode and an inner surface electrode contacting the first finger of the user as the contact is sensed, identifying a type of the second finger based on the measured impedance, and controlling an operation of the wearable device based on the identified type of the second finger.
Samsung’s patent FIG. 1 below is a schematic diagram of a method of identifying a type of a user’s finger touching a wearable device, a smart ring and controlling a wearable device, such a head mounted device (HMD); FIGS. 3A,3B, 4A and 4B illustrate various aspects of a wearable device, in the form of a smart ring.
Samsung’s patent FIG. 6 below is a diagram for describing an operation of identifying a type of a finger of a user in contact with a wearable device as a contact is sensed by the wearable device. It can be seen that the sizes of the impedances Z1 and Z2 are differently measured in the first type TYPE 1 ′ and the second type TYPE 2′.
Samsung’s patent FIG. 9 below is in an embodiment wherein a smart ring could control functionality related to target electronic devices such as a desktop, laptop, TV, tablet, and smartphone #905 or Mixed Reality Headset (HMD). In an HMD scenario, the smart ring is able to assist a user move virtual object (a VO) in a scene as shown below. When a touch input for touching and dragging a finger (F1′) included in the same hand as the finger (F1′) wearing the ring occurs, the operation of the AR device may be controlled according to a control command corresponding to the touch input. For example, an image of the virtual object VO ′ displayed through the AR device may move in various directions according to which direction the user moves the smart ring.
In Samsung’s patent FIG. 11 above, the smart ring may provide a service such as a make a phone call, send a message, start/stop music.
For more details, review Samsung’s patent application WO/2022/265354 that was published on December 22, 2022.
