Samsung working on a smart speaker of its own has been long known. We’ve been hearing about a Bixby-powered speaker from Samsung to rival the likes of Google Home and Amazon Echo since last year. Samsung obviously needs to make the speaker a bit differently to stand out from competitors, and according to one of the company’s recently approved patents regarding a smart speaker, it certainly does.
Samsung patent for a smart speaker
According to Patently Mobile , Samsung were granted a patent late in April for a speech-driven smart speaker. Samsung had filed patent back in 2016 itself, and the patent document does reveals a lot about it. According to the document, the speaker could come with an array of sensors, more than any model today have, going as far as being able to detect if a human being is in the room.
Well, the current crop of smart speakers are also able to do that, but only by keeping the microphone on and listening for human voices. Samsung wants to better that, by adding an infrared sensor that sweeps the room to detect human movement. Samsung might even opt for a camera, but the fear is that it will raise privacy concerns.
The speaker will also feature a temperature or humidity sensor. This, coupled with light sensors that could adapt the lamps and music to the atmosphere, might also be useful to decide the mood when the speaker is asked to play music. It will also be able to speak out the current weather based on your GPS for location.
This all, however, are just assumptions and speculations based on a patent document. And as is the case with every patent, everything described on it may never see the light of day on an actual product. But we hope to see something different from Samsung this time around. The Bixby speaker (name isn’t yet finalized) is expected to hit the market in the second half of the year.
