Apple is working on how future AirPods could allow specific spoken passwords, or your partner’s voice, to break through the noise-cancellation settings. Interruption for Noise Cancelling Audio Devices is a newly disclosed Apple patent application that aims to solve the problem.
Apple said in its patent application that audio devices such as headphones and earbuds could include noise-canceling features, where sound produced outside the audio device is detected and canceled by the audio device, in this way, a noise-reducing environment can be provided for the wearer of the audio device and/or enhance the listening environment in which the audio device produces the audio content.
However, these noise-canceling features of audio devices can prevent the user from hearing undesired external noises, but they can also prevent the wearer from hearing external sounds that the wearer may desire to hear. For example, the user may wish to be interrupted by one or more pre-designated contacts, or by a person speaking specified keywords to the user, which contacts are identified on the associated electronic device as interrupt-authorized contacts.
The net effect is that the AirPods will cut out the noise cancellation in order to let you hear whoever you decide to allow interrupting you. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the AirPods themselves have to do all the processing to identify the person. Apple recommends that the AirPods do at least some processing to avoid false positives and that the volume information collected by the headphones or the difference in arrival time can factor into the decision to forego noise cancellation.
Individual AirPods can be used to calculate time-of-arrival differences because each AirPods in a pair receives external sound slightly differently. However, in most of Apple’s cases, it is recommended that this calculation also uses the user’s iPhone. Apple proposes that when the music an AirPods user is listening to is provided by an iPhone, the iPhone listens for external noise, and it does at least a first-level recognition of the sound on the audio device.
In this case, the password will be your name, however, you can certainly set it to anything. As such, Apple’s patent application includes some details about training the device to accept user-specific keywords. The patent application is more concerned with determining that an interruption is welcome than what happens when an interruption occurs.
It’s possible that the AirPods just pick up a sound, turn noise-canceling off entirely, or switch to transparency mode. Once the interruption is triggered, the AirPods can do anything, like ask Siri to say that someone is talking to you, just like Siri currently reads text messages.