ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 23 -- United States Patent no. 12,424,220, issued on Sept. 23, was assigned to Sonos Inc. (Santa Barbara, Calif.).
"Network device interaction by range" was invented by Sebastien Maury (Paris), Valentin Fage (Paris), Do Kyun Kim (Paris), Daniel Fernandez Castro (Paris), Bjay Watanabe Kamwa (Paris) and Joseph Dureau (Paris).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Examples described herein relate to triggering voice assistant(s) on a network microphone device (NMD). An NMD is a networked computing device that typically includes an arrangement of microphones, such as a microphone array, that is configured to detect sound present in the NMD's environment. Once the voice assistant is ...