Apple Files A Patent On Wearables Made Out Of Fabric

Another week has come with big tech companies announcing amazing (or crazy) ideas.

Some of them might make it to the market and become the next big thing, others will forever be on papers and sometimes forgotten forever.

Let’s take a look at what tech giants are doing and what kind of innovation we can expect to see in the future.

Apple

A new word for charging cable

Apple is known for revolutionary ideas that can change the ways people use their devices but this time, all it has for us is a new word. Apparently, hanking is the word to call looping up a cord. And what Apple wants to file a patent for is the hanked cable.

Fabric wearables

Apple Watch is arguably one of the best smartwatches in the world but there are some nuisances come with using it. For example, if you trip and the watch hit the ground, it is highly likely that its screen will be broken.

To deal with this issue, Apple is looking at alternatives to make its wearables more durable. Recently, it won a patent for a fabric wearables with embedded light to show information.

Alphabet

Medical wearables

Wearables nowadays can do way more than just counting your steps, some of them can diagnose illnesses and save lives and Verily’s idea of such a device has the potential to level up the game.

A newly released patent suggests getting magnetic nanoparticles inside people’s blood stream. Next, the wearable will gather information from these particles. Some of the illnesses and conditions it can detect are gangrene and stroke.

Smart syringes

If you are terrified of syringes, you are not alone. The experience of having a sharp needle penetrated through your skin is not a fond memory for a lot of people. Another worry is someone accidentally inject air in you instead of vaccine, causing an embolism.

This smart syringes, developed by Alphabet, will ping a healthcare worker’s device if the syringe was not primed with air shot, a practice to get all of the air bubbles out.

This sounds like a handy invention and many of us will be thrilled to see it make it to the market.

Amazon

Use shape memory materials to build drones

If you have watched Batman, you might have seen a cool tech that turns his cape into a hard wing with only an electric charge.

Another patent filed by Amazon outlines a similar tech, but for everyday life, not combats.

What it has in mind is to use shape memory material for the actuators of drone’s propellers, which allows the aircraft to fly in several different directions.

The idea can help the drones reduce their chances of having failure as the number of moving parts are minimized.

Smart floors

You have heard of smart lightbulb, smart speakers, and smart doors, but now Amazon has expanded its portfolio to smart floor. The idea here is the floor tiles can let people in as long as they truly are who they claim they are.

The tiles will communicate with users’ connected devices to verify their identities with the person’s body as the circuit between them.

Facebook

Tracking you on other websites

Facebook owns WhatsApp and Instagram so it comes as no surprise that the company is trying to connect your accounts on all three platforms to have a clearer picture of who you are.

This patent outlines a tracking system that uses what Facebook has already known about you to find out if you have accounts on other online platforms. What the system can use is your profile photos or demographic information.

And why does Facebook want to know this information? Well, to target ads, obviously.

Gathering information from other sites

Facebook seems to love gathering information as it has another patent for a system that scrapes data from webpages. And the ultimate goal of this tool is for whenever a new product is launched, Facebook can show you an ad about it if it thinks the product might appeal to you.

Microsoft

Calorie-counting the food you purchase

Getting into a diet is never easy but this new invention of Microsoft can make the whole process a bit easier.

This system is tied to a virtual assistant, which uses information from your purchase history and nutritional info from food vendors and tell you how much calories you have consumed.

It can also notify you if the consumption agrees with the health goals you have set, like losing weight, or can trigger negative reactions in your body.

Shirts that displays your emotion or thoughts

Expressing yourself through your clothes has been taken literally by Microsoft as it recently filed patent for a shirt that can communicate how you feel.

This shirt is made by LED and textile, what it does is to display images and texts.

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