In All of us have become used to airbags that get deployed if the car crashes and save the life of the driver and the passenger. If Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, has his way, our smartphones in future could be incorporated with a similar safety mechanism. If the device falls, the airbag gets into action to cushion the blow. With sky-high prices of smartphones, this kind of system is the need of the day.
According to sources, Bezos had filed for the patent in February this year, but it has only now been made public. The technology consists of many tiny airbags, which automatically get deployed from the phone if the in-built accelerometer detects that the device is falling. The patent submitted by the Amazon boss also suggests using a laser or even radar to determine the distance between the phone and the ground.
The patent application is full of many other innovative suggestions for protecting a falling phone. This includes springs that would be released from the casing to ensure that the phone safely bounced on hitting the ground. There is also the suggestion that that a gyroscope or jets of compressed air could be used to alter the angle of the device in the air.
The patent application says, determining if a risk of damage to the portable device from the impact exceeds a damage threshold; when the risk of damage to the portable device exceeds the damage threshold: altering the orientation of the portable device such that the air bag first impacts the surface; and deploying the airbag prior to impact with the surface.
Jeff Bezos and the Amazon vice president Greg Heart have been credited with the invention in the patent application, which is yet to be granted. It was in 1994 that Bezos founded Amazon, which went on to become one of most successful e-commerce entities.
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