Apple has equipped Apple Watch with a “temperature sensor”, which is mainly used to track women’s menstrual cycles. According to a list recently published by the United States Trademark and Patent Office (USPTO), Apple recently obtained a new patent for the Apple Watch that can track core temperature.
Apple said: “Currently, medical thermometers are mainly used to detect the core temperature of the human body, and require intrusive methods such as entering the person’s mouth or ear cavity, and are not compatible with traditional wearable electronic devices such as smart watches.”
The body temperature of the human body is constant, and its internal temperature is maintained at about 37°C, which is the so-called core body temperature. It usually refers to the rectal temperature of the human body. It is located in the inner center of the human body, surrounding the organs, and its periphery is the body temperature. Wall and skin.
In this patent, Apple introduces a non-invasive way to measure the core body temperature of an Apple Watch wearer.
Apple said that the temperature and usage environment of wearable devices can change at any time, so using wearable devices to detect the user’s core temperature can be challenging.
Apple’s invention can overcome these challenges by measuring the temperature difference between two locations within the device, one close to the device and the other touching the user’s skin, and calculating a heat flux correction factor based on the skin’s heat flux through the device .
The processor on the watch calculates heat flux correction factors through 1 or more algorithms to determine the surface temperature of the skin, which can then be used to infer the user’s core temperature. IT Home attaches the patent design drawings as follows:
Apple says it can use a thin-film thermopile to measure the temperature difference between two locations within the device, with the thin-film thermopile’s hot junction in the first location (such as near the user’s skin) and its cold junction in the second location.
