On Thursday, the US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple that relates to providing a smart shopping experience using wireless communication. Smart gesturing may facilitate smart shopping and other contactless experiences by enabling a user to perform a natural gesture toward one or more desired items with or while wearing a wearable or non-wearable electronic device. The electronic device may identify the smart gesture, and determine the one or more desired items are indicated by the smart gesture.

Apple's invention that was published on Thursday covers various techniques to reduce or avoid undesirable conditions of the smart shopping experience (e.g., line formation, crowd-building, multiple users touching a single device), thus increasing the efficiency and ease of the smart shopping experience.

Apple's invention may enable a user to select, obtain information on, and purchase a desired item by gesturing towards the item. A gesture intended to identify or interact with a target item via an electronic device may be referred to herein as a “smart gesture.” The electronic device may include a non-wearable electronic device (e.g., a smartphone), a wearable electronic device (e.g., a smart ring, a smart watch, smart glasses, earbuds, headphones, and so on), a camera system that detects and identifies the smart gesture, and so on.

By enabling a user to choose a desired item by gesturing towards the item with any one of a number of natural, culturally pertinent hand, arm, and/or head gestures, the smart shopping experience may be simplified and streamlined—decreasing, or avoiding altogether, formation of long waiting lines and crowd building.

A variety of measures may be taken to enhance accuracy of the smart gesture and the item targeted by the smart gesture. For example, an electronic device may be equipped with one or more motion sensors that may detect a variety of movements (e.g., upward, downward, outward, inward, twisting, turning, and/or other similar motions) that may indicate a smart gesture, and processing circuitry of the electronic device may determine whether the movements form the smart gesture.

In some embodiments, a baseline for a specific user gesture may be established by a series of calibration movements that may be detected by the motion sensors. Additionally, the electronic device may include a machine learning engine that may learn and enable more accurate gesture identification.

Ultra-Wide Band (UWB) enabled electronic devices may enable fine-granularity smart gesturing via communication with a UWB anchor or a UWB beacon. For example, a UWB transmitter or UWB transceiver of the electronic device may ping (e.g. send a request packet to) one or more UWB anchors to determine the location of the electronic device within a smart gesture-enabled premises (e.g., restaurant, retail store, grocery store, and so on) to an accuracy of up to 5 centimeters. When the user directs a smart gesture at a desired item, the electronic device may establish a vector based on the smart gesture to determine the desired item.

In the UWB beacon use case, the beacon may be associated with a certain item available for purchase. When the user gestures to a desired item associated with a UWB beacon, and the electronic device is within a threshold range of the UWB beacon, the electronic device may receive a beacon signal from the UWB beacon, associated with or indicating the desired item. Smart gesturing may also be facilitated by 5.sup.th generation (5G) cellular network slicing, wherein a smart gesture-enabled premises may have a virtualized 5G network dedicated to supporting smart gesture operation.

Apple's patent FIG. 2 is a functional block diagram of the electronic device which could include a non-wearable electronic device (e.g., a smartphone), a wearable electronic device (e.g., a smart ring, a smart watch, smart glasses, earbuds, headphones, and so on), a camera system that detects and identifies the smart gesture, and so on; FIG. 3 is a perspective diagram of a smart gesture; FIG. 4 is a flowchart of a method for identifying the smart gesture of FIG. 3.

Apple's patent FIG. 6 above is a flowchart of a method for identifying the target item using the UWB anchor system; FIG. 7 is a perspective diagram illustrating identifying a target item in a UWB beacon system.

Apple's patent FIG. 13 below is a perspective diagram of smart gesturing operation in a smart gesture-enabled restaurant; FIG. 14 is a flowchart of a method for selecting food or drink items in the smart gesture-enabled restaurant of FIG. 13; FIG. 15 is a perspective diagram of smart gesturing operation in a smart gesture-enabled art gallery; FIG. 16 is a flowchart of a method for facilitating smart gesturing in the smart gesture-enabled recreational premises, such as the smart-gesture enabled art gallery of FIG. 15.

Apple's patent FIG. 17 above is a perspective diagram of smart gesturing operation to facilitate information collection while sightseeing; and FIG. 18 is a flowchart of a method for enabling smart gesturing to facilitate the information collection of FIG. 17.

To review this in-depth and technical invention, review Apple's patent application US 20220391955 A1.