A new Apple patent suggests a feature that could allow AirPods to identify you based on the shape of your ear canal.
The iPhone maker has reportedly filed a patent for a new biometric device to the US Patent and Trademark Office. The new tech would use ultrasonic signals reflected against the walls of a user’s ear canal.
Apple announced its Face ID feature during the unveiling of the iPhone X in 2017. And it appears like the tech giant has since been working on an innovative recognition technology using its AirPods — ear canal recognition.
Conventional wireless headphones that connect to smartphones can be used interchangeably by anyone using the device.
Apple could now make that impossible with their AirPods soon being able to authenticate a specific person.
The Apple patent, titled ‘User Identification Using Headphones’ describes how AirPods could be used to authenticate people using nearby devices, a person’s gait, voice recognition and ultrasonic signals, according to Patently Apple.
AirPods currently pose a security risk as anyone wearing them can access voice or other personal information on a device that isn’t their own. To solve this problem, Apple has been working on ‘improved systems for user identification using headphones’.
‘Conventional systems do not address whether the user wearing the headphones is authorized to interact with personal features of the device, such as receiving messages from the device,’ the patent reads.
If the new Apple patent comes to fruition, AirPods will be able to uniquely identify someone using various methods, including ultrasonic signals to recognise someone’s ear.
‘Various characteristics of the user’s ear provide an echo of the ultrasonic signal which is unique to the user,’ says the patent.
Variations in the surface of the user’s ear canal may cause the ultrasonic signal to reflect off the surface and generate an echo having a signature that is associated with the user. For example, a user having a larger ear canal may result in an echo having a longer reverberation time than a user having a smaller ear canal.
Other information about a person’s gait and voice could be combined using the iPhone’s microphone, accelerometer and gyroscope to authenticate them if required.
While the cool new feature might be as groundbreaking as Face ID or wireless AirPods, the technology is just in its patent stage. Notably, several Apple patents never make it to final Apple devices.
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