During Apple Watch presentations, Apple often dedicates a section to telling true stories about how the Apple device has saved lives with its advanced features.
Whether it’s abnormal heart rate detection, satellite SOS or accident detection, these life-saving emergency safety features offer unbeatable value for money.
Now a new patent application reveals the company’s next step in this direction: An assistant that can detect whether a swimmer is drowning or in danger and send a short-range SOS signal to alert nearby devices to the emergency.
The system described in the patent is used Accelerometer and gyroscope data to verify whether the user’s movements indicate drowning or some form of distress. Then search Readings of increased heart rate and/or low blood oxygen levels to further confirm whether an emergency exists.
The presentation states that this “Swimming metrics and other (biometric) information are fed into a machine learning model that is trained to classify a swimmer as one that behaves regularly or irregularly in the water.”. When a pattern indicating drowning is detected, a signal is sent to nearby devices, which in turn display pop-up notifications and sound audible alarms.
The paper also addresses a major challenge: radio signals are significantly attenuated underwater due to the conductivity of water, limiting the transmission range. However, using lower frequencies and narrower bands in fresh water (which is less conductive than salt water) can compensate for this problem to some extent.
Apple clarifies that the system is intended for use in shallow fresh water, such as swimming pools, ponds and lakes.
The document points out the need for such a system: In the United States, 3,500 people die from drowning each year. At the same time, it highlights the limitations of existing camera-based solutions to this problem, which are expensive, require complicated setup and maintenance, and often result in false alarms and false detections.
While a patent application doesn’t mean Apple will incorporate it, the technology appears to be relatively easy to implement with existing hardware and fits perfectly with the Apple Watch’s position as a life-saving device in a variety of situations. It also encourages more children to use the Apple Watch because they are statistically more vulnerable to drowning accidents.