It was three years ago that discussion forum and online rumor mill AppleInsider stumbled upon an 83-page patent filing for unique Apple technology that can quantify the previously unquantifiable.
By this, Apple means monitoring systems that can measure, say, the effectiveness of a karate kick or even what may have happened to the damaged contents of a poorly delivered FedEx package.
After exploring such technology and mind-bogglingly mathematical irregularities for the aforementioned three (plus, ostensibly) years, Apple continued refining the provisional filing and on Tuesday was awarded rights to "Personal items network, and associated methods," the title of the now divisional patent application.
The new filing refers to numerous earlier patents by Apple, some dating back to 2001.
In fact, as pointed out by AppleInsider, the filing further confirms that Apple is indeed meddling around with "an entire wearable/attachable computing platform and ecosystem comprised of wireless sensing systems for monitoring not only sports activity, athletic training, medicine, fitness, and wellness in humans, but also for tracking packages and industrial production."
According to Apple, incredibly small transmitters can be placed together in the form of a bandage-like adhesive strip (or also super-thin credit card form that could magnetically attach to other metal objects), which can include: a processor, detector, communications port, and battery.
Such a Movement Monitor Device (MMD) will be instrumental to Apple's wearable/attachable computer line. It is these ultra-attachable MMDs that could capture data on temperature, humidity, moisture, altitude, and pressure for the MMD to analyze.
In addition to the MMD, Apple also describes in its filing an EMD (Event Monitoring Device) that could similarly check humidity, chemistry, heart rate, pulse, pressure, stress, weight, environmental factors, and hazardous conditions.
Apple feels that such technology could be applied to body armor and other uniforms, like for racecar drivers.
For more on the patent and wearable computer technology, the (rather turgid) abstract for the patent itself is as follows:
"A personal items network, comprising a plurality of items, each item having a wireless communications port for coupling in network with every other item, each item having a processor for determining if any other item in the network is no longer linked to the item, each item having an indicator for informing a user that an item has left the network, wherein a user may locate lost items. A method for locating lost personal items, comprising: linking at least two personal items together on a network; and depositing one or both of time and location information in an unlost item when one of the items is lost out of network."
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