Future Apple smart locks could be even smarter about when to automatically unlock

Alongside its HomeView and its partnerships with other firms, Apple has revealed that it is serious about smart homes through new research aiming to make smart locks safer.

Imagine if you have a smart lock and a thief knows it. In the right circumstances, they could wait until you were walking away from your house and simply open the door before the smart lock registers that you're out of range.

In practice, smart locks need you to be pretty close before they will open, but nonetheless, Apple has been considering problems like this. A newly-revealed patent application shows that Apple has been researching what it calls "Approach-Based Lock Control."

This concerns helping to avoid "unintentional unlocks of a lock device that provides automatic, touchless unlocking when a user carrying an authorized device approaches the lock device." More than just recognizing an authorized iPhone is nearby, Apple wants to do more.

For instance, the patent application says that "a lock mechanism may be unlocked only when an authorized device approaches at one or more pre-determined approach angles, with at least a predetermined approach speed, with at least a threshold approach consistency, and/or along one or more predetermined approach paths."

So if you are walking away, the smart lock won't unlock. If you are passing by the front door left to right as you mow the lawn, it won't unlock.

The same idea applies if you're in your den, then head upstairs, passing near enough to the front door that it might otherwise unlock. In that case, Apple is suggesting that alongside proximity detection by the lock, there should be a more intelligent memory of a user's actions.

So right now they may be so close to the front door that they might unlock it. But ten minutes ago they entered the door so they are inside, so the door shouldn't unlock.

Or perhaps this could be done with finer presence detection. Someone inside the house will want to leave and so the door should unlock, but if they actually turn left into the living room, it shouldn't.

No research is wasted

Perhaps revealing where this idea initiated, Apple does also make a brief mention of where it could be used besides in smart homes. It could instead be used in "a vehicle, or a gym, a swimming pool area, or other restricted physical structure."

That could be a sign that this really started as part of the abandoned Apple Car project. But then as with all patent applications, this one tries to be as broad as it can to help future lawyers win cases.

So it does also say that this smart home system might be used in a "smaller structure, such as a cabinet, a locker, a safe, or the like."

This patent application is credited to Zachary A. Rosen. His previous work for Apple includes being part of a team working on securing data storage where multiple users need access.