Earlier this month the World Intellectual Property Organization published an international patent application of Google's that relates to a method that comprises detecting, by a presence-sensitive housing of a smartphone, one or more user inputs. The method further comprises generating, by a smartphone, a map of the one or more user inputs, wherein the map indicates respective locations of the presence-sensitive housing at which each of the one or more user inputs could be detected.

Providing input at a presence-sensitive display may visually obstruct the information being displayed, which may make it more difficult for a user to interact with a smartphone.

Google’s patent covers identifying a gesture performed on the backside of a  presence-sensitive housing of a smartphone using both active and inactive touchpoints detected by the presence-sensitive housing. A smartphone may include a presence-sensitive housing that detects inputs at multiple locations outside of the area of a presence-sensitive display. When a user holds the computing device by the presence-sensitive housing, the smartphone detects the presence of parts of the user’s hand.  

In accordance with the techniques disclosed in Google’s patent, a smartphone uses a machine learning model, such as a federated machine learning model, to generate a model of the user’s hand based on a map of inputs detected by the presence-sensitive housing.

The smartphone then uses the model of the hand and the federated machine learning model to identify which of the detected inputs should be used to identify a gesture input being performed by the user. Based on the identified gesture input, the smartphone performs one or more actions such as adjusting a volume setting, scrubbing video playback, and modifying a graphical user interface of the smartphone (e.g., portrait vs landscape mode, placement of elements within the graphical user interface, etc.), among other actions. In this way, various aspects of the techniques of this disclosure may enable a smartphone to determine which inputs are part of a gesture input and filter out various inputs determined to be false inputs generated from a user holding or adjusting their grip on the computing device.

Further, various aspects of this patent enable the smartphone to provide a more consistent user experience and avoid frustrating the user by mistakenly-recognizing unintentional inputs as gesture inputs.

In one example, a method includes detecting, by a presence-sensitive housing, one or more user inputs. The method may further include generating, by a smartphone, a map of the one or more user inputs, wherein the map indicates respective locations of the presence-sensitive housing at which each of the one or more user inputs was detected.

• 1 below is a conceptual diagram illustrating an example computing device including a presence-sensitive housing
• 2 is a block diagram illustrating further details of a computing device that performs gesture detection
• 3 is a conceptual diagram illustrating example self-capacitance data generated by a presence-sensitive housing of a computing device, and
• 6 is a flowchart illustrating example operations of an example computing device for outputting a graphical user interface.

Like with most patents, the focus zero’s in on the main device that the invention is intended for and leaves the door open for other future devices that could use this invention. In this case, Google notes that the presence-sensitive housing could apply to a tablet, a smart speaker, a laptop computer, a desktop computer, a gaming system, a media player, an e-book reader, a television platform, an automobile navigation system, or a wearable computing device such as a smart watch or a computing device such as a digital whiteboard.

The patent figure below comes from a patent filed in 2005. Apple was granted the patent in 2020. Apple’s patent covered an iPad with a backside touch sensitive surface.  

While Google’s patent is far from being novel, Google may actually execute on this idea ahead of Apple.