Airbag for mobile phone? It's possible!

What if you're told that like cars, your cell phone, too, could someday have an airbag that will inflate when it senses it will hit the ground?

The idea may sound futuristic, but this is precisely what Amazon chief executive officer Jeff Bezos, along with vice-president Gregory Hart, appears to have had in mind when he filed a patent to this effect with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Bezos applied for the patent (No 703919) last February, but it was made public this month.

The application describes a method to protect a portable device, which "includes an airbag deployable from a side of the device".

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In the application, Bezos reasons that in today's world, while portable devices are ubiquitous and often indispensable to work and personal life - and convenient because they are small and light, they can be damaged when they come in contact with a hard surface or fall into a liquid.

A cellular phone, for instance, may be equipped with a damage avoidance system that includes a safety monitoring system and a protection system.

If the user drops the phone, the safety monitoring system, through the use of various detection elements, determines that the device is no longer in contact with the user, measures the distance from the approaching surface (e.g., ground) and determines the velocity toward that surface.

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Based on the collected information, the safety monitoring system would determine whether the risk of damage to the phone, which will be caused by the impending impact, exceeds an acceptable threshold.

If 'yes', the protection system gets activated. The protection system causes the device to be reoriented and deploys an airbag prior to contact such that the airbag first contacts the surface.

Instead of the phone directly impacting the surface, the airbag absorbs the impact and cushions the phone, so that the damage is reduced or substantially eliminated.

The system, according to the application, could include a distance detector that could use a sound or light generator/source (e.g., radar, sonar, laser, and infra-red) in conjunction with a receptor/receiver to capture the reflection of the generated sound or light wave to calculate the distance between the portable device and the surface.

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The system could also have a motion detector to measure the movement of the device.

It could include, for example, an accelerometer or any type of motion detection device.

A contact detector could measure whether the portable device is contacting or substantially proximate to another object (e.g., a user's hand, desk surface, pocket).

And, a surface type detector could determine the type of surface that the portable device is approaching when moving toward a surface.