Smartphones, smart watches and all the related paraphernalia can be a huge nuisance while you are driving. The urge to take off your eyes, and sometimes your hand, from the steering wheel for a moment so as to check the text that bae sent you can be irresistible — and uh, fatal. Which is why Apple is stepping up and taking responsibility to ensure that the number of notifications being sent to you while you are driving, is reduced.
Detecting Controllers in Vehicles Using Wearable Devices. This is what Apple’s newest patent is being called. And what it does is, that it uses the motion detection to recognize when a particular person is driving a car. At those times, the device will automatically limit the number of notifications being pushed to the device. Less distractions means less chances of banging into the oncoming traffic. So basically, motion sensors provide data that the can be utilized to know the device’s angular velocity. If it’s below a certain threshold, everything will go as usual.
However, If the angular velocity is above a particular threshold, the watch will then estimate the direction of gravity, What it will also do is make a rough estimate of the direction of gravity from a companion device like an iPhone. Finally, the determination of the fact that whether all this angular velocity is coming from the twisting of a steering wheel, will take place. Once all this is done, the watch will take the final call and if it sees the person as driving the car, it will limit the number of notifications that are getting through.
This could really have an important effect in ensuring that the number of accidents are reduced. As per US government estimates as many as 431,000 people were injured and 3,179 were killed in 2014 alone. These particular collisions it should be noted, all occurred due to distracted driving. While we have no way of knowing when, and if, Apple will implement its patent — this ingenious application of the Apple Watch’s motion sensor could go a long way towards reducing the number of mishaps.
