Today's Apple Watch is controlled by touch. In addition, it also has a scrollable button digital crown, which also provides some input functions. However, the above patents show that users can use their Apple smart watches without touching the Apple Watch screen. The company applied for a patent called automatic gesture and finger recognition vein scanning equipment.
Apple Watch may have a vein detection function in the future (image source iLounge)
The patent explains the working principle of Apple Watch in detail, saying that its vein detection system will be able to capture the image of the user's wrist vein, and the imaging system will be able to analyze various movements of the human hand.
It is reported that the vein detection system will work by analyzing many factors, such as the location of veins, their relative spacing, shape, blood flow and displacement. Then, all these data can be used to perform specific custom operations according to the user's gestures.
The system is likely to work on neural networks or machine learning models, which will be trained to understand human hand movements. For Apple Watch, this may be a useful auxiliary function.