You can use your laptop keyboard even at nights because your laptop has an illuminated keyboard. Light sources like LED bulbs are present at sides or behind the keys of the keyboard so that you can use it even in poor light conditions.
Now if we look we can see that almost every accessory is becoming smart. We are using smartphones, Samsung is making smart phonebook. Microsoft is augmenting mouse functionality and improving it. However, If we look back in history everything has evolved but the keyboard is still the same.
We are using the same keyboards that we used 15 years back. Yeah, some changes in the size of the keyboard were there but we can’t consider that as a major improvement. What we consider as an improvement is a way Google is improving a contact lens.
Today, every major company is delving to make its electronic device energy efficient by implementing ingenious techniques. They are overhauling every small component of their devices.
If we observe, while we are watching movies on our laptop or reading a text document we generally do not use our keyboard. The LED back-lights of the keyboard gleams continuously. This consumes power and eventually leads to significant battery drainage. And in order to make laptop energy efficient even these sorts of small improvements have to be made.
So the concern is when we will be using a smart and energy-efficient keyboard? The answer is – very soon because Google is doing some work here and trying to make our keyboards more intelligent and soon you soon will be working on a smart, intelligent, and energy-efficient keyboard by Google.
How Google is Making A Keyboard Smart and Power Saving
Google is coming up with a technique that controls the back-lighting of the keyboard by observing the eye movement of a user. Google got a granted patent having a title Adaptive Keyboard Lighting in the USPTO that is delineating this concept.
Google discloses in the patent that the keyboard will work in close coordination with the camera of your laptop or computer. The webcam will be responsible to track the eye movement of a user.
Based on the eye movement information provided by the camera, the microcontroller will control the LED backlights of its keyboard. Thus technically you can control the backlight of a keyboard by your eye movements.
So, if you are not looking towards your keyboard, the LED backlights will be switched off. Similarly, if you are watching TV while working on your laptop OR you are busy in a discussion and not looking toward your laptop, the camera will analyze it and will send signals to the microprocessor save power by turning the LED back-lights off.
The patent also suggests keeping the arrow keys of the keyboard always gleaming so as to allow the user to easily track his keyboard in dark.
Google is also working towards making the keyboard more intelligent by determining the type of program the user is using at the moment. For example, we hardly use the keyboard while reading a PDF document and rather use a mouse.
In these sorts of situations, the microprocessor will turn the LED panel off. However, it will send the LED panel to an ON state automatically whenever it will determine something on the screen where the keyboard input is required.