While we were all focused on sensors that fit on our wrists, Apple was quietly winning 38 patents for a system of sensors as big as a house.
The patents describe a system that would let Siri do her job throughout your home, from reminding you to take your meds to turning out your lights. We’ve known for a while that Apple is working on revamping Siri: In October, Apple bought Cue , an app that scans your emails and creates agendas based on them. And CarPlay will borrow heavily from Siri , too. But according to a report from Patently Apple, the company could be planning to expand her domain.
The new patents shows how a network of sensors placed around your home — reading things like motion, time, light, and more — will be used to help Siri make recommendations and provide information. The example the documents use is taking your medicine — Siri will notice that it’s 8 am, and that you’re in the kitchen, and suggest that you remember to take your pills:
Or, you could use Siri’s existing voice controls to set alarms, start appliances, and pretty much anything else you can think of.
Whether or not Apple will really implement any of these concepts is still impossible to say. But after we learned that the company is developing an app for tracking the minutia of your health yesterday, a system that does the same for your phone doesn’t seem all that far-fetched. [Patently Apple]