Apple’s latest smart ring patent includes health monitoring features, as well as the ability to control other Apple devices, including smart glasses. The patent includes the ability for the ring to send data wirelessly to Apple devices, where it can be displayed on the devices’ screens.
The currently available smart rings, such as the Oura Ring and Samsung’s Galaxy Ring, are designed to collect health and fitness data. While Apple holds multiple smart ring patents that deal with health and fitness data, they also hold patents dealing with using the rings as an input device for other devices.
Apple’s latest patent (shared by Patently Apple) has mentions to health monitoring:
If desired, a device may be operated in isolation. For example a wearable device that is operating in a stand-alone operating mode may perform health monitoring operations. Gathered health data may or may not be shared with other devices.
It also includes information about using the ring to control other Apple devices:
In other scenarios, the system may use one or more electronic devices to gather input from the user to control the operation of one or more electronic devices.
In this type of scenario, a user may, for example, provide input to one device that causes one or more additional devices to take particular actions. A user may, for example, provide touch input, gesture input, force input, or button press input with a first device that is used to control content that is being displayed on a display, audio that is being played with a speaker, and/or haptic output that is being generated with a haptic output device in a second device.
The patent also refers to “head-mounted devices.”
In the illustrative example, device is a head-mounted device having head-mounted device housing. Housing may have […] have the shape of a pair of glasses, goggles, a helmet, and/or other housing configured to be worn on a user’s head.
While the ring control features may not be needed for Apple’s Vision Pro headset, the features could come in handy with a cheaper non-Pro version of the Vision headset, or for “smart glasses” which would not have the room for the cameras and sensors used in the Vision Pro headset.