This week the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published a new round of Apple patents wherein at least two of them could be considered oddballs that may or may not ever come to market. For some, oddball inventions could be sleepers. They may seem dumb in print but could actually surprise the market once they arrive. Yet others will simply shake their heads in disbelief at why Apple would waste their time on such strange ideas. Below are a snippets from these two oddball patents and you could judge the potential of each for yourself.

#1: Attenuating Co-User Interactions in a Simulated Reality Setting.

In Oddball patent #1 Apple presents us with another scenario wherein a foreign avatar invades your metaverse abode and takes a virtual spray paint can and mucks up your virtual paintings in a particular virtual room. So, what do you do? 

In Patent FIG. 5D, shown in our cover graphic above, the avatar #505-A triggers breaching of the avatar social interaction criteria by spraying graffiti #560 on the painting #520 and the wall of a metaverse abode. The user's avatar will be able to virtually erase the graffiti to make it invisible.

For more details, review Apple's granted patent 11712628 or view our original patent application report here. Apple added 20 new patent claims that could be reviewed at the bottom of the U.S. Patent.

#2: Siri to Interpret your Jaw Movements to Confirm your Verbal Command(s)

Maybe it's just me, but Siri has to be one of the dumbest digital assistants on the market today. I don't know how many times I've commanded Siri to find a movie or series title on my Apple TV box, only to be presented with a completely asinine response. Secondly, it never really responds to a request, it just points me to information on Google to check out. So why do I need Siri for that?

In a new patent published this week by the U.S. Patent Office, we learn that Apple wants to attempt to have assist Siri better understand a user's command. Apple notes: "Recognizing a voice input using motion sensing provides an intuitive and efficient approach for controlling an electronic device. When a user speaks, the user's mouth, face, head, and neck move and vibrate. Motion sensors such as accelerometers and gyroscopes can detect these motions, while expending relatively little power compared to audio sensors such as microphones.

Additionally, motion sensors are less likely than audio sensors to detect ambient sound, such as another person speaking or voices from a television or stereo. By comparing motion data to reference data for a set of one or more reference words or phrases (e.g., voice commands, in-vocabulary words, or the like), a matching reference word or phrase can be determined. Accordingly, a task associated with the recognized (e.g., matching) reference word or phrase can be initiated based on the motion data, without needing to detect or process audio data."

Apple's patent FIG. 8A illustrates a system for recognizing voice inputs using motion sensing.

To learn more about this new oddball invention from Apple, read patent application 20230245657 that was published yesterday.