Google patents wristband that reads hand gestures from blood flow
Google has been granted a patent for a wrist-worn device that uses infrared light to capture images of the tissue under your skin. By analyzing changes in blood flow patterns, the device can detect specific hand and finger movements to recognize gestures.
In the filing’s own words
Techniques of operating an AR system include determining hand gestures formed by a user based on a sequence of two-dimensional images through skin of the user's wrist acquired from a near-infrared camera. Specifically, an image capture device disposed on a band worn around a user's wrist includes a source of electromagnetic radiation, e.g., light-emitting diodes in the infrared (IR) wavelength band that emit the radiation into the user's wrist and an IR detector which produces the sequence of two-dimensional images of a region within a dermal layer in the user's wrist. From this sequence, gesture detection circuitry determines values of a biological flow metric, e.g., a change in perfusion index (PI) between frames of the sequence, based on a trained model that generates the metric from the sequence. Finally, the gesture detection circuitry maps the values of the biological flow metric to specific hand/finger movements that determine a gesture.
What exactly they claim (claim 1)
1. A method comprising: receiving a sequence of images through a wrist of a user; applying a model that maps the sequence of images to a biological fluid flow metric; determining a gesture formed by the user based on the biological fluid flow metric; and performing an action based on the gesture.
Facts
- Company
- Google (GOOGLE LLC)
- Official title
- Gesture detection via image capture of subdermal tissue from a wrist-pointing camera system
- Patent number
- US12761736B2
- Application number
- 18440605
- Filed
- Feb 13, 2024
- Granted
- Oct 13, 2026
- Inventors
- 5
- Claims
- 23
Classified under
G06F 3/017 Physics & computingG06F 1/163 Physics & computingG06V 10/82 Physics & computingG06V 20/20 Physics & computingG06V 40/1318 Physics & computingG06V 40/15 Physics & computingMore from Google in Wearables
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Summaries are simplified from the filing’s own abstract and first claim. A patent filing is not a product announcement.
Patent data and drawings: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Nebula is not affiliated with or endorsed by the USPTO.