Apple's engineers have been working hard on advancing Apple Watch to include both a camera and to understand wrist gesturing since 2014.  The Apple Watch team has been working on advancing this leading smartwatch device under the direction of Erik dee Jong, the Apple Watch Product Design Lead who is also listed on this invention.

Apple's invention generally relates to Apple Watch detecting a user's motion and gesture input to provide commands to the device or to other devices. In particular, Apple Watch can use one or more sensors to determine a user's motion and gesture input based on movements of the user's hand, arm, wrist, and fingers.

One or more optical sensors, inertial sensors, mechanical contact sensors, and myoelectric sensors, to name just a few examples, can detect movements of the user's body. Based on the detected movements, a user gesture can be determined. The device can interpret the gesture as an input command, and the device can perform an operation based on the input command.

By detecting movements of the user's body and associating the movements with input commands, the device can receive user input commands through another means in addition to, or instead of, voice and touch input, for example.

Apple's patent FIG. 4 below illustrates an exemplary configuration of an Apple Watch on a user's wrist.  

More specifically, when a user wants to perform any one of the movements illustrated in the figures below starting with FIG. 3A, fingers #402, wrist #420, and hand #404 can move when the user's brain sends electrical signals to stimulate muscles #430. The muscles then contract in response to the received electrical signals.

In response to the received electrical signals, the tendons (#410) attached to muscles (#430), can also contract or move and can cause to move a user's fingers, wrist, and hand. As the tendons contract or move, Apple Watch can detect the movement of the tendons, the electrical signal, or both.

Based on either the tendon movement or electrical signal or both, the Apple Watch is able to determine the user's motion and gesture. The motion and gesture can be interpreted as commands to the Apple Watch.

Apple's patent FIG. 6 below illustrates a plan view of an Apple Watch with motion and gesture sensing using inertial sensors; FIG. 7A illustrates a cross-sectional view of a wrist and an Apple Watch with motion and gesture sensing using mechanical contact sensors; FIG. 7B illustrates a cross-sectional view of a wrist and an Apple Watch with motion and gesture sensing using optical sensors located in the strap; and FIG. 7C illustrates a close-up view of the strap.

Apple was granted this patent in June. Apple's team quickly followed-up with a continuation patent filing to protect a new series of patent claims reflecting important aspects of Apple's original invention.

Apple's granted patent in June focused the invention's 19 patent claims on a "gesture input detector" system. Today Apple adds a set of 21 new patent claims with a focus on two aspects of the invention. The first 7 new patent claims focus on an "Optical Sensing Device." The remaining 14 patent claims focus on "the Portable electronic device," which is Apple Watch.

The Optical Sensing System

The seven new patent claims regarding an "Optical Sensing Device" are presented as follows:

1. An optical sensing device, comprising: a housing; and a display disposed within the housing; a set of light emitters included in the housing of the optical sensing device, wherein a first light emitter of the set of light emitters is configured to emit a first wavelength of light toward a user's body part and a second light emitter of the set of light emitters is configured to emit a second wavelength of light, different than the first wavelength of light, toward the user's body part; a set of optical sensors included in the housing of the optical sensing device, configured to detect reflections of the first and second wavelengths of light from the user's body part; and a processor configured to determine a difference between the detected reflections of the first and second wavelengths of light, and to identify motion artifacts using the determined difference between the detected reflections of the first and second wavelengths of light.

2. The optical sensing device of claim 1, wherein the second wavelength of light is a longer wavelength of light than the first wavelength of light.

3. The optical sensing device of claim 1, wherein the detected reflections of the first wavelength of light are associated with motion artifacts.

4. The optical sensing device of claim 3, wherein the processor extracts motion artifacts out of the detected reflections using the determined difference between the detected reflections of the first and second wavelengths of light.

5. The optical sensing device of claim 1, wherein the detected reflection of the first wavelength of light is a reflection off of the user's skin.

6. The optical sensing device of claim 1, wherein each light emitter of the set of light emitters and each optical sensor of the set of optical sensors are paired in an emitter-optical sensor pair, and each emitter-optical sensor pair is configured to be associated with a tendon located in the user's body part.

7. The optical sensing device of claim 1, wherein the processor is configured to determine a gesture from the detected reflections of the first and second wavelengths of light.

Apple Watch

The remaining 14 new patent claims cover a "Portable Electronic Device" which is the Apple Watch and some new aspects protected as follows.

8. A portable electronic device, comprising: a housing; and a display disposed within the housing; a set of light emitters included in the housing of the portable electronic device, each light emitter configured to emit first light toward a respective tendon in a body part of a user; a set of optical sensors included in the housing of the portable electronic device, each optical sensor optically coupled to a corresponding light emitter of the set of light emitters to form one of a set of emitter-sensor pairs and configured to detect light reflected off of the respective tendon that receives light from the light emitter, wherein each emitter-sensor pair is configured to be associated with a different tendon in the body part than other emitter-sensor pairs of the set of first emitter-sensor pairs.

9. The portable electronic device of claim 8, wherein the set of light emitters emits short wavelengths of light and long wavelengths of light.

10. The portable electronic device of claim 9, wherein: the emitted long wavelengths of light are reflected off of the body part of the user; and the reflected long wavelengths of light are used to detect internal changes of the body part of the user.

11. The portable electronic device of claim 9, wherein: the emitted short wavelengths of light are reflected off of skin of the body part, and the reflected short wavelengths of light are used to detect motion artifacts.

12. The portable electronic device of claim 8, wherein: the one of the set of emitter-sensor pairs is a first set of emitter-sensor pairs, and a second set of emitter-sensors pairs is located in a band that is attachable to the housing.

13. The portable electronic device of claim 8, further comprising logic disposed in the housing and configured to determine a gesture of the user.

14. A portable electronic device comprising: a housing; and a display disposed within the housing; a strap attached to the housing of the portable electronic device, wherein the strap is separate and distinct from the housing of the portable electronic device; a set of light emitters included in the housing of the portable electronic device, wherein a first light emitter of the set of light emitters is configured to emit one or more wavelengths of light at a user's body part; a set of optical sensors included in the housing of the portable electronic device, configured to detect the light reflected off of the user's body part; a set of motion detectors included in the strap of the portable electronic device and configured to determine a gesture, the strap comprising an elastic region and an inelastic region.

15. The portable electronic device of claim 14, wherein the elastic region of the strap comprises one or more gauges in a flexible material.

16. The portable electronic device of claim 15, further comprising circuitry configured to measure resistance of the one or more gauges.

17. The portable electronic device of claim 15, wherein the one or more gauges are strain gauges.
18. The portable electronic device of claim 14, wherein the set of motion detectors are configured to determine the gesture using at least one of a stretching or compression of the elastic region of the strap. 

19. The portable electronic device of claim 14, wherein the set of motion detectors are configured to determine the gesture using at least one of a measured change in length or area of the elastic region of the strap.

20. The portable electronic device of claim 14, wherein the strap comprises an inner band and an outer band.

21. The portable electronic device of claim 20, wherein: the inner band is flexible, and the outer band is rigid.

The Apple Watch is the leading smartwatch on the market and has been since its release back in 2015. Last week Patently Apple posted a report titled "In the First Half of 2020, Global Smartwatch Revenue was up 20% with Apple Watch taking a surprising Leap to over 50% of the market." Apple will continue to dominate the smartwatch sector as they continue to advance their focus on both health applications and innovation that is reflected in this current continuation patent involving an advanced optical system for wrist gesture accuracy and the addition of a camera that was part of the original vision for this invention.

Past reports on this invention include:

2016: Apple expands their work on Advancing Apple Watch to Include Wrist Gestures and a Camera

2019: One Apple Watch Team Project is Advancing Motion and Gesture Input

2020: Apple Won 57 Patents today covering a Next-Gen Motion and Gesture System for Apple Watch and much, much more

Apple's continuation patent 20200272240 that was published today by the U.S. Patent Office was originally filed back in May 2020. Considering that this is a continuation patent, the timing of such a product to market is unknown at this time.