“It would appear that one of Apple’s R&D teams have been assigned with the project of coming up with new ways to utilize the iPhone’s built-in camera beyond simply taking photos,” Jack Purcher reports for Patently Apple.
“Last month we were clued into an innovative concept that will help users control their incoming calls and voicemail by simply swiping their finger over the external camera lens. It detailed rewinding and fast forwarding voicemail in addition to enhancing one handed navigation of web pages, documents or your iTunes library – by once again, swiping the camera lens in different swiping motion combinations,” Purcher reports. “In today’s patent, we’re presented with the idea of that we’ll be able to train the iPhone (or perhaps a future iPad) to automatically turn the speaker-phone mode on under specific conditions like when you’re driving a vehicle or busy working on your computer”
Purcher reports, “The camera is trained to understand both lighting conditions and your common surroundings so as to know when your speaker phone should or could be activated. If you’re a busy executive, then this may be the answer you’ve been looking for. For now however, it’s simply an R&D project.”
Full article, with patent application illustrations, here.