Sony could soon allow you to control the devices around you with a wearable ring

While Sony is still a big name in the world of electronics, their presence in the United States — as far as mobile phones goes — is dwindling. A quick search on any website selling electronics shows Sony selling TVs, cameras, speakers, and lastly, cell phones. It might just be time for Sony shakes things up a bit.

In a recent posting on the US Patent and Trademark Office website, Sony has laid out the groundwork for a product that would change the way you control not only your smartphone, but also other electronics around you. This “wearable input device” — shown as a ring in the patent images — would house sensors that would be able to detect motion and other interactions made by the user wearing the device.

Sony’s patent is not only for the wearable itself but for an entire system that would receive instructions from the wearable and then output that data to different devices such as phones, tablets, and televisions. There is not too much information just yet about what features the wearable input device would be able to do when interacting with other devices but hopefully it is more than just moving items around onscreen.

Below is Sony’s “brief” explanation of the wearable input system itself:

“Embodiments include an electronic input system, which has a wearable input device having an accelerometer and circuitry configured for an operation detection mechanism and an input communication mechanism The operation detection mechanism acquires acceleration data from the accelerometer to detect an input event. The electronic input system also has a first electronic device having circuitry for a first communication mechanism, a first event analyzer, a screen display, and a first data communication mechanism. The electronic input system also has a second electronic device having circuitry configured for a second communication mechanism, a second event analyzer, a second data communication mechanism, a screen combining mechanism, and a screen display. Embodiments also include a method of communicating an event between an input device and one or more electronic portable devices, such as the first electronic device and the second electronic device.”

We have seen plenty of companies promise ring-shaped and wearable motion controllers in the past but not deliver on functionality when the product hit the market. Could Sony be the company to make this future come to life?

[USPTO]