In an effort to catch up with some of Samsung's higher profile granted patents this month, today's report covers five patents: two related to an AI Speaker, another for a Magic Trackpad-like Device, Samsung's 4th Drone design and finally one for a flexible hinge for a notebook.
In August 2014 Samsung filed a detailed patent application for a hybrid notebook with a new flexible hinge. Lenovo has been praised by reviewers like Anandtech for their 'amazing' flexible hinge for their Yoga notebook as noted in our cover graphic.
Today Samsung was granted a patent for their flexible hinge as noted below which mirrored their 2014 utility patent filing. While Samsung has yet to implement this design feature to date, it's a possibility for a future Samsung notebook now that its design is protected by the U.S. Patent Office.
Unlike "patent applications," design patents published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office never reveal pertinent information about a particular design. We can look at the design and appreciate it for what it projects, but we'll never discover which materials may be used to construct the design and beyond.
Samsung's 4th Drone Design Patent
On April 11th Patently Mobile posted a report titled "Samsung is granted their Third Design Patent for a Drone Device." A week later Samsung was granted their fourth Drone patent as noted below. It has more of a UFO design twist to it.
Magic Trackpad-Like Device for Samsung Pen
Samsung was granted a utility patent earlier this month for a device that mirrors Apple's Magic Trackpad yet with added Samsung Pen support for drawing, writing and doubling as a mouse with just a single button mode switch. A patent pending equivalent was filed by Apple in July 2016.
Samsung actually filed for this patent back in Q3 2010. So it took close to 8 years to get this approved.
Smart Speaker Design Patent
On the same day this month Samsung was granted a design patent for a smart speaker noted above along with a utility patent for an AI speaker. For the later, Samsung's granted patent states that it covers apparatuses and methods consistent with the exemplary embodiments relate to an artificial intelligence audio apparatus which is capable of interacting with a human.
In particular, exemplary embodiments relate to an artificial intelligence audio apparatus and an operation method thereof which determines an existence of a human and says a greeting that is suitable for a current time and surrounding environment, asks the human whether to play music, and upon request, selects and plays music that is suitable for the surrounding environment and mood. Further, when certain music is played, adjusts lighting suitable for a type of the played music to create a mood.
Further, Samsung notes that an aspect of exemplary embodiments may provide an artificial intelligence audio apparatus including: a sensing part which is configured to sense a current location of the artificial intelligence audio apparatus and at least one of a temperature and a humidity of the current location, and sense whether a human exists in the current location; a first communicator which is configured to communicate with an external server through a network; a storage which is configured to store greeting data which includes at least one of a plurality of greeting voices and a plurality of greeting texts according to a plurality of circumstances, and music data which includes a plurality of music; a voice processor which is configured to process and output a voice and music; a display processor which is configured to process and output a text; and a controller which is configured to receive weather information of the current location from the external server using location information of the current location sensed by the sensing part, determine whether a predetermined greeting should be output when the sensing part senses an existence of the human in the current location, and in response to determining that the predetermined greeting should be output, extracts at least one of a greeting voice and a greeting text, from greeting data stored in the storage, which corresponds with a current time, at least one of the temperature and the humidity sensed by the sensing part, and the weather information of the current location received from the external server, and output the extracted at least one of the greeting voice and the greeting text through at least one of the voice processor and the display processor.
The sensing part may include a location sensor which is configured to sense the current location, a temperature and humidity sensor which is configured to sense the temperature and the humidity and a human body detection sensor which is configured to sense whether the human exists in the current location. Here, the location sensor may include a global positioning system (GPS) module.
Also, the human body detection sensor may include at least one of a passive infrared (PIR) sensor which is configured to sense infrared rays, and a camera which is configured to photograph an image.
Samsung's AI patent was originally filed in Q2 2016 and granted this month.
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