If you’ve been hankering for an Apple sleep mask, this could be the thing you’re looking for.
Apple on Tuesday was granted a patent for a device that reads like a sleep mask wearable device, one that’s equal parts sleep mask and on-ear headphones.
The patent addresses concerns related to AirPods potentially falling out, as well as getting lost and broken. While headphones are sometimes better, they’re often uncomfortable.
Apple’s proposed solution incorporates speakers or bone conduction transducers into a fabric band. The fabric would have triangular ends that the wearer inserts their ears into, while a “central portion of the fabric between the ends may overlap the user’s eyes.”
The bone conduction transducer would be particular intriguing, if Apple designs it effectively. Such devices would play audio for you using bone conduction, so they wouldn’t be large enough to cause discomfort when laying on your side.
The patent also describes how fabric overlapping around the wearer’s eyes. Apple describes using light-blocking fabric to aid in going to sleep as well as proposes inserting LEDs, lined up with the user’s eyes. These could be used to influence the sleep cycle, as part of a light therapy regimen, or as an alarm.
Apple’s patent also describes incorporating biometric sensors to gather health data, presumably to display in Apple’s Health app and including sleep quality analysis. Some of the described sensors include microphones to monitor snoring and provide active noise cancellation.
Other sensors would gather data on eye movements, overall body movements, and use blood pressure sensors, heart rate sensors, and more. The collected data would transfer over to your iPhone, where you could access it and see the trends of your sleep cycles.
It’s unknown when a product would emerge from this, what it would be named, or which exact features Apple might incorporate into the final design.
Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.
Via The Mac Observer and the United States Patent and Trademark Office