Apple Patent Application Detects Cracked Windshields

If you’re doing any kind of regular driving, it’s likely a matter of time before you’ll find yourself confronting a cracked windshield. Maybe a stray rock chips the glass and it spiders out as the car is heat cycled through the winter or perhaps an errant baseball does some real damage during a summer afternoon catch with the family. There is a multitude of reasons but only one outcome — pure, unadulterated rage leading into some mental math as you ask yourself how long you might be able to get away with it going unfixed.

Well, those days may soon be over (minus the rage) because Apple filed a patent application earlier this month that describes a system that would monitor the resistance of a conductive film placed inside/against a sheet of laminated glass.

The patent application was filed in the United States on November 19th and shared by CNET on Monday. Here’s how it’s explained in the abstract:

A system such as a vehicle may have windows with one or more conductive layers. The conductive layers may form part of an infrared-light-blocking layer or other layer. The infrared-light-block layer or other layer may be formed as a coating on a transparent structural window layer such as an outer or inner glass layer in a laminated window or may be embedded in a polymer layer between the outer and inner layers. Segmented terminals and elongated terminals that may extend past two or more segmented terminals may be coupled to the edges of the conductive layer. Using these terminals, control circuitry can apply localized ohmic heating currents and make resistance measurements on the conductive layers to detect cracks.

Based on the general trend connected vehicles are pursuing, the obvious application would be a system that allows the vehicle to tattle on you to the manufacturer or insurer. Alternatively, the system could also pick up on cracks before they become visible — allowing customers to fix them long before they get begin impacting visibility. Unfortunately, it also seems like the sort of thing that would make replacement windshields cost a fortune.

[Image: What Photo/Shutterstock]