Developing a new car crash detection innovation into the iPhone adjacent to CarPlay could sustain Apple’s rumoured IronHeart project.
Apple is reportedly accomplishing a new iPhone and Apple Watch feature that detects if you’re in a car crash and dials 911 automatically.
The current strategy is to roll out such an innovation the following year.
Google’s Personal Safety app on Pixel phones previously includes a feature to ask for help when it identifies car crashes, just like associated car services in modern carriers do, including Subaru’s Starlink, Fiat Chrysler’s Uconnect, and GM’s OnStar.
Car Crash Detection Innovation
Several cars on the road now are not implemented with any connectivity features. Getting crash detection on an iPhone too anticipates more drivers can get the guidance they require in an accident as seriously as they have one in their pod or mounted to their dashboard.
According to Apple, the rise of precarious smartphone usage in cars made space for integration practices such as CarPlay and Android Auto, the former appearing in approximately 80 percent of modern carriers in 2020.
Formulating a new crash detection feature is Apple’s rumoured IronHeart project to correlate its phone with car settings in the identical way HomeKit controls smart speakers and lighting. Targeting the yearly $2 billion (approximately Rs. 14,915 crores) revenue stream that GM takes in with OnStar with the built-in innovations would be very Apple stuff.
While Apple’s accident discovery hasn’t perpetually worked as expected in the past, the organization has had several years to accumulate data and analytics on compliant iOS and watchOS users. As a result, it continues to be seen how exactly Apple will discover car crashes, let alone people falling.
Apple is reportedly attaching an automatic car crash detection highlight to the iPhone and Apple Watch. The feature will debut beginning of the following year, possibly with iOS 16.
The report maintains that Apple will act on using the sensors already in both the iPhone and Apple Watch to identify “a sudden spike in gravity,” the equivalent way Apple’s Watch works at the time for fall detection. There are no specifications on how it would be achieved, but a notification will pop up. If the user does not reply to a statement promptly, the phone will automatically dial 911 or other emergency services. It is how the Apple Watch’s fall detection feature functions.
It would not be an unusual feature on the phone. Google’s Pixel 6 Pro, Pixel 6, and other up-to-date Pixels support car crash detection and automatic emergency services telephoning in the U.S., U.K., Ireland, Australia, Japan, Spain, and Singapore as part of Google’s Personal Safety app.
As smartphones are the tools everyone uses daily, phone makers have implemented features to help mitigate some of the issues they could cause. Distracted walking has recently happened more and more. People pay consideration to their telephones to drive or text while driving around, for example, and innovation on Android thru Google’s Digital Wellbeing app prompts users to look up pay consideration to their surroundings.
On a related note, mobile phone use was considered for 13.4% of distraction-affected car crashes in 2019. So besides headphone volume prompts, sleep tracking, and other similar features meant to reduce the adverse impacts of smartphone overdependence, car crash detection would match right in.
IronHeart Project
Apple’s IronHeart Project incorporating the control of in-vehicle settings with CarPlay or an iPhone isn’t new but instead developed.
As date back as 2013, which means approximately eight years ago, Patently Apple covered an Apple patent titled “Automatic Configuration of Self-Configurable Environments.” Apple’s invention is generally associated with in-vehicle self-configurable circumstances and, more specifically, procedures and systems for saving configuration specifications in an iDevice such as the iPhone.
Apple’s futuristic system was designed to allow future iPhone user to manage their in-vehicle settings for mirrors, climate control, power seats, radio and more. Once set, the iPhone will control settings even for a rented car.
The passenger compartment comprises an adjustable steering wheel and a movable seat. By way of non-limiting instance, the seat is adjustable up and down, backward and forward, increasing and decreasing an angle of recline. In addition, the steering wheel is flexible to move closer to and distant from a driver. While not shown, other features of the passenger experience can also be flexible, like air conditioning temperature, radio preferences, mirrors, lumbar support, etc.
In some inclusions, the location of a driver’s head can be approximated (or learned). An angle of adjustment can be determined based on the associated mirror locations, the position of the driver’s head, and a planned target vantage spot.
Knowing that this project was around for eight years, it isn’t much of a surprise to read Bloomberg’s report on such a project. The scheme allegedly now has a code name attached to it: IronHeart.
Apple’s patent registered other features an iPhone would one day be ready to control in the car, like “lumbar support, air conditioning temperature, radio preferences,” with some repeated in the Bloomberg report.
Of course, being eight years later, some of the features introduced by Bloomberg cover a few new things like checking “surround-sound speakers, defroster tachometer and humidity readings.”
The connection of Apple’s patent was establishing a vehicle setting (and home settings) utilizing an iPhone. In contrast, the Bloomberg report adds “CarPlay,” introduced a year after the patent was published.
Wrap Up: Car Crash Detection Innovation
Apple’s IronHeart project isn’t brand-new; it has simply emerged. However, recognizing that Apple attached Car Keys last year, we can anticipate more innovations for vehicles are on their way.