Today the US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple that covers their Apple Pencil 'Hover' feature, making it a patent fulfilled. Below is a snippet from an Apple video that covered the Apple Pencil Hover feature.

This technological high-end feature is buried in highly technical Patentese and yet one paragraph in plain English confirms the patent's target feature as follows:

"Longer-range object sensors can also be used as part of methods and systems for detecting a hovering or gesturing user object, such as by detecting a user object's presence or absence at a distance from the device that is beyond the detection range of the display interface, detecting a position of the user object relative to the object sensors (e.g., detecting a delta in sensor readings from multiple longer-range sensors), and reducing false positives of user object detection by filtering certain sensor readings from the longer range sensors or touchscreen."

Sensors can be used to detect physical phenomena in the vicinity of the computer system (e.g., electric fields) and convert those phenomena to electrical signals.

Sensors can be sensitive to changes in an electric field near the sensors, such as changes caused by introduction of a user object such as a user's body part (e.g., finger, hand, or palm), an electronic tool (e.g., a stylus), or other object to be tracked by the object sensor or touchscreen device. In some embodiments, object sensors can comprise infrared sensors (e.g., a passive infrared (PIR) sensor or motion sensor), cameras, radar devices, lasers, or other distance or proximity sensor devices.

Apple patent FIG. 11 below shows a schematic side view of an electronic device with indicated object detection ranges for various example sensors; FIG. 12 shows a chart of a process of the present invention.

To review its full details, review patent application 20230400945.