Students and office workers who carry heavy laptops and personal items with them every day rely on backpacks to store their belongings. For such people, there is good news: Microsoft may soon create a backpack with artificial intelligence (AI) to take the functionality of backpacks to a new level.
A patent filed by Microsoft showing the concept of an AI backpack was filed on May 2, 2023 and published on August 24, 2023, as spotted by MSPOWERUser.
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The wearable will be capable of much more than your average smartwatch, with advanced capabilities such as scanning the environment, understanding voice commands, and performing contextual tasks.
To perform these tasks, the backpack will include pressure sensors, microphones, cameras, global positioning systems (GPS), compasses, barometers, biometric sensors, speakers, displays for visual output, processors and more.
In the patent, Microsoft describes possible backpack functions:
The backpack can receive contextual voice commands from the user. A contextual voice command may contain an implicit reference to an object in the environment. Backpacks can use sensors to sense the environment, use artificial intelligence engines to recognize objects in the environment, and use digital assistants to perform contextual tasks in response to contextual voice commands. A referenced function can be associated with an object in the environment. The backpack can respond to voice commands directed at the user.
An example in the patent shows a skier wearing an AI backpack asking it a question about slopes, to which the backpack responds: “No. That direction is out of bounds. Ski to your right to stay inside.”
If you’re wondering if you should expect something like a backpack at Microsoft’s September launch event, the answer is no. There is a long journey between filing a patent and producing a backpack, and even if it reaches the production stage.
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In the past, Microsoft has filed several patents for products that never saw the light of day, including trifold phones and headphones with fingerprint sensors.
Although the AI ​​backpack will not appear at the upcoming event, Microsoft’s corporate VP and consumer chief marketing officer Yusuf Mehdi confirmed. X post (formerly Twitter) that Microsoft will share more about its AI innovations.