Smartwatches are literally everywhere now. It was not too long ago that it seemed to be quite a niche market, however more recently, it does seem to be a market which is finally gaining some notable traction. While in reality, adoption levels are still low, the number of manufacturers who are invested in smartwatches easily highlights how important they view the market going forward. One of the benefits of this high and multiple investment is that there is going to be a lot of smartwatches coming through in the future. As a result though, companies seem to be looking to adopt some very peculiar methods to bring to market a product which is different to the rest. This was most recently noted yesterday when a patent was spotted filed by Nikon for what was essentially, a smartwatch which emits fragrances. Today, another patent has been spotted being filed and this time by Samsung on what can only be described as an equally interesting smartwatch.
The new patent filed by Samsung is for a watch which uses the wearer’s veins as a means of identification. Making use of the same logic behind fingerprint recognition, the watch is said to have the ability to take a picture of the wearer’s veins and which can then be used as a identification control image. From then on, once the wearer’s veins are processed again and matched against the control image, the smartwatch is unlocked. By ‘unlocked’, this refers to access to the user’s profile, their settings, playlists, contacts and so on. The patent highlights that the smartwatch will come with two lights and a camera on the side which will be used to capture the wearer’s veins.
In reality, it does seem that the ‘identification for access’ element might be overkill, as a smartwatch is not really (comparatively speaking) a device which needs greater levels of security due to the constant attachment to the person. Therefore, the assumption being made about this technology is that it has more far-reaching implications for the future and could possibly be used an aspect which plays better with the IoT and other connected services. Of course, as this is only at the patent stage, it could also never materialize into anything substantial and remain just a patent filing. Either way though, those interested in finding out more about how Samsung plans to use veins as a means of identification, can check out the patent in full by heading through the source link below.