The Apple Pencil family of styluses are made primarily with the iPad tablets in mind – it’s primarily used with them, on their screen’s surface. But it looks like the bitten fruit brand is working on one that’s a bit more universal, if a recent patent filing is to be believed.
Titled “Input Device With Optical Sensors”, the idea behind the patent is that the stylus, presumably an upcoming Apple Pencil model, gets optical sensors on its tip that’s similar to optical mice. Like optical mice, this allows the stylus to register inputs to a connected device without having to touch the device’s screen. With high enough lift-off distance, you can potentially also draw by hovering on surfaces instead.
A bit more specifically, the patent mentions two specific types of sensors that could be built into these optical styluses. One is optical flow sensors – these are the most like mice – which detects motion by analysing frame-to-frame changes in light. The other is what is called laser speckle flow sensors, which track granular laser reflection shifts.
While it’s possible to just use these sensors for the Apple Pencil as is, the patent describes another way of using them that may seem more conventional. This is done by attaching a track ball at the bottom, and getting the sensors to track the track ball instead. There are tradeoffs to doing this, as it sacrifices accuracy on the Z-axis, tilt, orientation and axial rotation of the stylus, but you protect the tip of the stylus itself from damage.
Of course, as with all things patent, there’s no guarantee that this will end up being something you can find on shelves. Though if Apple intends to keep pushing its mixed reality headset, this is is probably the new Pencil that the fruit needs.
(Source: USPTO)
