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Apple has been granted a patent for know-how that has the iPhone hear chewing, immediate you to {photograph} your meals, and will then criticize your meals selections.
Apple’s newly-granted “Augmented Actuality Calorie Counter” patent is cut up between detection of chewing, after which dedication of what’s being eaten. The patent does not actually explicitly say Apple will complain at you for snacking. However that is solely as a result of patents are involved with how one thing is set, not what’s then performed with the knowledge.
Even so, that is clearly one other avenue for Apple’s ever-expanding health services. However on this case the corporate says it is wanted due to our ever-expanding waistlines — and the maybe shocking difficulties in counting energy.
“Many components contribute to inaccurate calorie counting,” says Apple. “For instance, serving sizes could also be troublesome to measure whereas consuming in a restaurant.”
“The result’s that individuals have inaccurate calorie counts, impairing weight reduction, correct drug dosages, and extra,” it continues.
Based on Apple, there’s an choice to buy and eat “solely from single serving packages to make sure an correct calorie depend,” however that is “costly and impractical.” Plus it “results in an extreme quantity of packaging supplies.”
Consequently, Apple thinks the iPhone can step in with a “methodology for enhancing dedication of meals consumption.”
“[It] contains detecting, by a microphone, a chewing noise from a consumer throughout a chewing session;” continues Apple, “[and] in response to detecting the chewing noise, triggering operation of a digital camera; acquiring, by the digital camera, picture knowledge capturing a meals product.”
That picture can then be analyzed in presumably comparable methods to how Visual Look Up identifies crops and flowers. In addition to determining whether or not it is chocolate cake or a BLT, the picture processing contains “figuring out a quantity of the meals product primarily based on the measurement of the chewing session.”
So it is aware of what number of beans there are in your plate, and it is aware of the way you spend chewing. Which means the iPhone can then be utilized in “figuring out a calorie consumption primarily based on the meals product, the amount of the meals product, and the measurement of the chewing session.”
The patent is unusually cautious to emphasize simply how “complicated and time consuming” determining precisely tips on how to implement such a system can be. “[It] would nonetheless be a routine enterprise for these of unusual ability within the artwork of picture seize.”
So sure, grabbing a photograph of a sandwich at a fuel station will likely be totally different and maybe tougher than photographing a banana in your kitchen desk. However the steps would be the similar — detecting consuming, prompting for photograph, and analyzing that picture.
Apple does additionally say that there will likely be circumstances when different info comes into play. “For instance, location info related to the picture knowledge might point out a selected restaurant,” it says, “prompting object detection module… and processor… to make use of the restaurant’s menu to determine the meals product.”
Once more, the patent is targeted solely on getting this knowledge, on this figuring out a calorie depend. Presumably that info may very well be recorded in some a part of the Well being app.
However it means your iPhone realizing what you eat, how lengthy you eat it for, how a lot you are consuming, and even simply what number of occasions you go to Chili’s. There’s received to be scope for a third-party weight-reduction plan app that is as sarcastic as Carrot Climate could be.
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