One of the features Apple emphasized for its upcoming HomePod speaker is what the company refers to as ‘spatial awareness.’
This is a more efficient version of a semi-manual audio adjustment process used by other high-end speaker systems like Sonos and Naim. But a new Apple patent application published today suggests that future versions may go further …
The patent describes how a speaker could not only configure itself to an initial location, but also detect when it has been moved to a new position and reconfigure its sound to suit.
This would make it practical to simply pick up the HomePod and take it with you to a new room as desired, knowing you’ll always get the best audio performance.
A system and method is disclosed for determining whether a loudspeaker device has relocated, tilted, rotated, or changed environment such that one or more parameters for driving the loudspeaker may be modified and/or a complete reconfiguration of the loudspeaker or the loudspeaker system may be performed.
The patent notes that a huge variety of sensors could be used to facilitate the detection of speaker placement.
This is likely ensuring that a patent covers all of the bases rather than any intent to actually use such a comprehensive mix.
As always with Apple patents, there’s no telling which ones will make it into a product, but given that Apple has already implemented the first half of the equation in the first-generation HomePod, I’d say it’s a reasonable bet that it will add the second half at some point.
Although HomePod doesn’t go on sale until December, it’s already been spotted in the wild as Apple seeds it to select retail staff to test in real home environments.
Via Patently Apple
