ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 19 -- United States Patent no. 12,334,067, issued on June 17, was assigned to Apple Inc. (Cupertino, Calif.).
"Voice trigger based on acoustic space" was invented by Prateek Murgai (Palo Alto, Calif.) and Ashrith Deshpande (San Jose, Calif.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A plurality of microphone signals can be obtained. In the plurality of microphone signals, speech of a user can be detected. A gaze of a user can be determined based on the plurality of microphone signals. A voice activated response of the computing device can be performed in response to the gaze of the user being directed at the computing device. Other aspects are described and claimed."
The patent was...