Apple may have abandoned plans for an Apple Car, but the tech giant is still being granted patents related to vehicle technology. The latest is number US 12017518 B1 for “System And Method For Dynamic Privacy And Window Tinting.”
About the patent
In the patent Apple notes that a car may have windows that don’t adequately protect and shield occupants from sunlight and other forms of light exterior to the environment. In addition, conventional environments don’t provide occupants with adequate privacy.
Conventional windows have static light transmittance and cannot adapt to occupants of the environment, current conditions associated with weather or lighting, and actions of the occupants. In short, Apple says conventional exterior facing surfaces with static light transmittance would benefit from many improvements.
The tech giant’s patent involves a vehicle system i with a computing device and tinting hardware modules. Adjustable exterior facing surfaces would have adjustable tint films that utilize sensors and imaging devices of the vehicle to intelligently tint the adjustable exterior facing surfaces and protect, shield, or obstruct a particular object, location, or zone within an interior of the vehicle.
Summary of the patent
Here’s Apple’s abstract of the patent: “A processor and a non-transitory computer-readable medium store instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to perform operations including receiving a location; in response to determining that the location is known, setting a first tinting level of a surface; and in response to determining that the location is unknown, setting a second tinting level of the surface that differs from the first tinting level.”
