On September 16th Patently Apple posted a report titled "Google's Hardware Event to be held in New York on October 15." On the major features coming to the Pixel 4 is their In-Air Gesturing System called "Aware" which is illustrated in our cover graphic above. Apple has been working on in-air gesturing for years and our archives on this area of technology cover most of their patents to date.

Today the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of 64 newly granted patents for Apple and one of them is titled "Gesture based user interface."  

Apple's granted patent covers an invention of a gesture based user interface, comprising a movement monitor configured to monitor a user's hand and to provide a signal based on movements of the hand; a display; and a processor configured to move a cursor responsive to the signal from the movement monitor, within a predetermined region on the display, formed of a plurality of sub-regions associated with respective control commands, and to provide the commands to a controlled application responsively to the movements of the hand.

Optionally, the processor is configured to ignore downward components of movements of the hand. Optionally, the quick-access sub-regions are located within the predetermined region such that downward movements do not lead to a quick-access sub-region.

Apple's patent FIG. 1 below is a block diagram of a control system based on identifying hand gestures; FIG. 2 is a schematic view of a horizontal bar user interface; and FIG. 4 is a schematic illustration of a joystick user interface.

Lastly, the patent states that beyond hand gesturing, the invention could be in context with other future movements such as leg movements, body movements and finger movements.

Apple's granted patent 10,429,937 was originally filed in Q1 2017 and published today by the US Patent and Trademark Office.

Apple notes that this granted patent covers a series of patents such as: 6,452,584 to Walker et al., titled: "System for Data Management Based on Hand Gestures"; U.S. Pat. No. 5,549,469 to Freeman et al., titled: "Hand Gesture Machine Control System," and more.

One of the inventors listed on the patent is Jonathan Pokrass: Algorithms Manager. Pokrass was previously a Project Manager with Israel's PrimeSense that Apple Acquired. Most of the work on in-air gesturing patents has been done with PrimeSense patents and engineers.

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