Your next Apple Watch may be able to alert others if you’re drowning
The upcoming Apple Watch X, or Apple Watch 10, may be able to alert people around you if you are in difficulty in the water
The Apple Watch safety features have been growing in recent years, with the smartwatch now boasting features like fall detection for the elderly (and not-so-elderly) as well as being able to alert emergency services if you come off your bike or are involved in a vehicle smash.
The upcoming Apple Watch X, or Apple Watch 10, may also be able to alert people around you if you are drowning so they can either help you or alert emergency services. The feature would use motion as well as the watch’s water detection feature but also biometrics to detect the rather irregular situation that you might be drowning.
Apple Watch drowning detection has been rumored before but a relevant patent has now surfaced online, spotted by our friends at Wareable.
The patent filing was published online in March but as with the way of these things, it will have been around for a lot longer than that. The documentation attributes Munich-based Apple wireless systems engineer Biljana Badic as the inventor.
The patent says the “method comprises: determining, with at least one processor of a wearable device, whether a user is swimming or not swimming based on sensor data; in accordance with the user not swimming, determining with at least one processor and based on the sensor data, whether the user is showing regular or irregular behavior while swimming; and in accordance with the user showing irregular behavior, sending an alert message from the water over air to one or more other devices.”
So in essence, if drowning detection kicks in on your Apple Watch (so it thinks you are drowning) it could potentially ping other watches and iPhones nearby – perhaps based on your contacts list and whether those devices are in Bluetooth range.
Of course, there would be a lot of complicated logic at play to bring this feature to fruition; it’s quite one thing to ping people on the side of a pool but another to alert your friends further up the beach if you get into difficulties in the sea.
Dan Grabham
Editor-in-Chief