Apple has been working on an audio system for their future smartglasses. Patently Apple posted a report in August based on a European patent titled "Apple invents a Dual-Speaker earphone system that could play music privately or in new 'Public Mode' via a new exhaust port." Today, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially granted Apple a patent that relates to this very same type of audio system for smart glasses that also offers a 'Privacy Mode.'

An aspect of today's Apple's granted patent covers a method performed by a headset that is worn by a user for activating a privacy mode. 

The headset is an audio device (e.g., smart glasses) that includes extra-aural speakers that are configured to output user-desired audio content (e.g., music).

These speakers, as opposed to earphone speakers project sound into the environment to be heard by the user of the headset. This projection of sound produces a sound field, within which other people (e.g., observers) may be able to hear the sound. 

This may be an undesirable effect when the audio content is of a private nature (e.g., a phone call with a doctor). To prevent observers from overhearing the sound produced by the speakers, the user of the headset may activate the privacy mode, which causes the headset to reduce sound output of the speakers, and thereby reduce the size of the sound field to only include the user. Thus, the observers who were originally within the sound field can no longer hear (or perceive) the sound.

To activate the privacy mode, the headset determines that a speaker is at least partially covered. When the sound level exceeds a threshold level above which is indicative of the speaker and microphone being at least partially covered (e.g., by the user's cupped hand), the headset may activate the privacy mode.

Apple's patent FIG. 1 below illustrates a progression of stages of a user initiating a privacy mode on a pair of smart glasses upon a determination that a speaker of the headset is at least partially covered.

Apple's patent FIG. 2 below shows a block diagram of a controller according to one aspect. The controller #200 includes a gesture detector #205, a sound field predictor #210, a context detector #215, and audio adjustor #220. In one aspect, the detectors, the predictor and the adjustor may be implemented in software (e.g., as instructions stored in memory and executed by the controller) or may be implemented by hardware logic structures. In another aspect, the detectors and logic may be implemented differently from one another.

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For more details, review Apple's granted patent 11809774.

Key Team Members on this Apple Project

• Nikolas Vitt: Senior Manager, Acoustic Design
• Chris Eubank: Engineering Manager, Apple Vision Products Group - Audio
• Jonathan Sheaffer: Lead / Eng. Manager, Acoustics Technology
• Neal Evans: Audio System Tuning Engineer