Tech giant Apple has patented a new type of keyboard that would use more sensors and a type of air feedback system.
The basis behind the keyboard is that because computers are becoming smaller, so are keyboards, which reduces the amount of room that can be devoted to sensors. This can hurt effectiveness.
Apple’s new keyboard attempts to overcome that problem by using an air-based system to determine what the user might do, before they actually do it. According to Patently Apple, the keys would use LED lights as well.
“As a twist to this patent, Apple goes on to describe that flowing of air could also be implemented in a virtual keyboard, wherein each key location is merely a defined region on a solid surface, where contact with that surface region will generate a defined input signal,” it says.
However, such a system is likely to be quite swhile away from production.
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
