Apple Working On Biomedical Smart Glasses, Patent Suggests

It's common knowledge that Apple is working on improving its offerings in the health and wellness category, and a newly granted patent shows that the company is taking its approach to health one step further with a pair of biomedical smart glasses.

The new patent, spotted by Patently Apple, describes a head-mounted display device that can monitor certain gestures and head movements and can work together with other health devices, such as the Apple Watch, to provide users with important information regarding their health.

The patent titled “Monitoring a user of a head-wearable electronic device” focuses on “systems, methods, and computer-readable media for monitoring a user of a head-wearable electronic device with multiple light-sensing assemblies.” It describes a head-worn device capable of monitoring facial gestures (like opening or closing mouths) and head movements (like nodding).

The patent is highly technical, but in a cinch, it describes a pair of smart glasses that have a multitude of sensors, including health-related optical sensors, capacitive sensors, thermal sensors, electric field (eField) sensors, electrocardiography (ECG) sensors, galvanic skin response (GSR) sensors, posture sensors, stress sensors, photoplethysmogram sensors (PPG) and the like.

These sensors can be used to monitor a variety of movements, gestures and metrics such as chewing, smiling, eyebrow-raising, eye-rolling, eyes widening, blinking, squinting, winking and more.

The patent also states that the system can monitor humming or other internal vocalizations (such as "mmm-hmm", "uh-huh" and the like), inaudible cues, jaw motions, flaring nostrils, speaking or other external explicit language vocalization and mouth opening (including opening one side, such as left or right, only).

Interestingly, the patent said the system can be used to understand emotions, thoughts and/or brain functions.

By working with other health devices, the head-word device can also be used to monitor heart rate, oxygen saturation and other biometric characteristics such as sweating and temperature. The head-worn device will then be able to alert users about the important information it acquires.

The information can then be used for health purposes, such as providing users and health providers with important data.

The patent was published Tuesday. It remains unknown at the moment if and when it will hit the market.