Apple granted patent that involves an user interface for vehicles and robots

Apple has been granted a patent (number 10,976,178) for “systems and methods for generating an interactive user interface.” It involves vehicles, but also other machines, especially those that involve robotics.

In the patent filing, Apple notes that autonomous machines,” including robots, aerial vehicles, aerospace vehicles, submersible vehicles, automobiles, other ground vehicles, and the like,” are capable of operating within their respective environments with limited input from a user. However, the tech giant says that conventional autonomous machines generally fail to compensate for this lack of operational engagement between the user and the autonomous machine. 

As a result, the user may be unaware of future actions planned by the autonomous machine and/or lack an understanding of a basis of a decision or action of the autonomous machine, which may unnecessarily decrease a confidence of the user in the autonomous machine or otherwise make the user uneasy. Apple wants to make interactions between any machines it makes and a user to be seamless.

Here’s the summary of the patent: “Implementations described and claimed herein provide systems and methods for interaction between a user and a machine. In one implementation, machine status information for the machine is received at a dedicated machine component. The machine status information is published onto a distributed node system network of the machine. 

“The machine status information is ingested at a primary interface controller, and an interactive user interface is generated using the primary interface controller. The interactive user interface is generated based on the machine status information. In some implementations, input is received from the user at the primary interface controller through the interactive user interface, and a corresponding action is delegated to one or more subsystems of the machine using the distributed node system network.”

The Apple Robot mock-up is courtesy of DeviantArt.