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Your iPhone could stop you getting into the wrong Uber ever again

A newly-granted Apple patent proposes using iPhone AR to identify an oncoming vehicle, to be certain that it’s the ride you booked.

Smartphone screen showing a row of houses between tall trees and a centered message box reading MOVE PHONE TO IDENTIFY ARRIVING VEHICLE
Detail from the patent showing how an iPhone screen could help you find the right car – image credit: Apple.

Maybe it’s more common for people to deliberately push their way into a waiting car they know isn’t theirs, but it can also happen by accident. That’s perhaps especially true when you are at a crowded event and everybody in sight has also booked a ride.

To solve this, Apple has once again been granted a patent called “Augmented reality interface for facilitating identification of arriving vehicle,” which it was previously awarded in 2023. There are actually around half a dozen patent applications for this technology, and chiefly by the same inventors, dating back to 2018.

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