Earlier this month the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Google revealing a possible future Android feature that would turn off a device when a user is driving a vehicle but keep it functioning if the user is a passenger in a car or other vehicle such as a bus, train, car or other.
Google's Patent Background
Some mobile devices (e.g., wearable computing devices, mobile phones, tablet computing devices, vehicle entertainment or navigation systems, etc.) provide a variety of functions that a user may wish to access while traveling in a vehicle. User interaction with certain functions of a mobile device may be unsafe and/or unlawful when a user of the mobile device is simultaneously operating a vehicle. To promote safe and/or lawful interaction with the mobile device, some mobile devices enable and/or disable certain functions responsive to the mobile device detecting that the mobile device is located in a moving vehicle. As such, even if a user of the mobile device is merely a passenger in the moving vehicle (and thus is not actually operating or driving the vehicle), the mobile device may unnecessarily prevent the user from safely and lawfully accessing one or more functions of the mobile device.
Google's Solution
In general, techniques found in Google's patent filing may enable a wearable computing device (e.g., a computerized watch, computerized eyewear, etc.) to perform an operation based on a determination that a user of the wearable computing device (e.g., a person wearing the wearable computing device) is driving a moving vehicle.
When the wearable computing device is located at, on, or within the transportation moving vehicle (e.g., at or near a location of the transportation vehicle, within range of a wireless communication signal of the transportation vehicle, etc.) an inference may be made that the user of the wearable computing device is riding in the transportation vehicle.
Based on an indication of movement detected by the wearable computing device, a determination can be made as to whether the person riding in the moving vehicle is driving the moving vehicle (e.g., by performing an act of driving such as turning a steering wheel, moving a gear shift, etc.). The wearable computing device and/or other computing devices (e.g., a server device, a mobile phone, etc.) may accordingly perform one or more operations (e.g., enabling and/or disabling a function, feature, and/or component of the wearable computing device, outputting information from the wearable computing device, etc.) if the determination is made that the person is performing driving the moving vehicle (and not merely riding in the transportation vehicle).
Unlike some mobile computing devices that may enable and/or disable certain features of a device whenever a user is riding in a transportation vehicle, a wearable computing device or other computing devices in accordance with techniques of this disclosure may perform certain operations responsive to first determining whether a user of the wearable computing device is actually driving the transportation vehicle, and not merely a passenger riding in the transportation vehicle.
In this manner, the wearable computing device can promote safe and lawful use of the device without unnecessarily enabling or disabling certain features when a person wearing the wearable computing device is riding in the transportation vehicle. This is an important distinction considering that users could be riding a bus, a train, be on a boat or in a cab and so forth where they need to access their data and/or the net for any reason.
In other words, if a user of the wearable computing device is merely a passenger of the moving vehicle, and is not actually operating or driving the vehicle, the wearable computing device may be configured to refrain from unnecessarily inhibiting the wearable computing device from performing certain operations.
Google's patent FIG. 1 noted above is a conceptual diagram illustrating an example computing system configured to determine whether a user of a wearable computing device is driving a moving vehicle.
Last year AndroidCentral was hoping that Google was working on this and today's patent revelation proves that they are.
Considering that this is a patent application, it's unknown when such an Android feature would be coming to market.
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