Apple Inc.

Oath Inc.

Nan Liu

Zaki Moussaoui

Gianpaolo Lisi

Madhusudanan Keezhveedi Sampath

Weihong Qiu

Robert Scritzky

Zelin Xu

Florence W Ow

Liquan Tan

Blake R Marshall

Reza Nasiri Mahalati

Matthew J Chabalko

Dmitry Berdnikov

Eric Steven Jol

Aidan N Zimmerman

Hao Zhu

Joel N Ruscher

Qigen Ji

YiBo Liu

John Raff

Christopher S Graham

Jia Li

Rohan Dayal

Li-Quan Tan

Stefan A Kowalski

Rex H Huang

Jen-Hao Hsiao

Kunal Bhargava

Alex C Yeung

Tianqi Li

Wei-Hsuan Chen

Saining Ren

Yasin Aalipour

An electronic device in a wireless power system may be operable with a removable accessory such as a case. The device may convey wireless power to, from, or through the case while the device is coupled to the case. The device may have coplanar power transmitting and power receiving coils. The removable accessory may have an embedded switchable ferrimagnetic core and a coil that overlaps the switchable ferrimagnetic core. The switchable ferrimagnetic core may be operable in a first state where the switchable ferrimagnetic core is unsaturated. The switchable ferrimagnetic core may be operable in a second state where the switchable ferrimagnetic core is saturated by a magnetic field from a permanent magnet in a wireless power transmitting device. In the second state, the switchable ferrimagnetic core may have a lower magnetic permeability and higher magnetic reluctance than in the first state.

Wireless charging system with a switchable magnetic core

A device in a wireless power system may be operable with a removable accessory such as a case. The device may transmit or receive wireless power through the case while the electronic device is coupled to the case. The case may have a folio shape with a front cover portion that covers the display of the electronic device. The case may have an embedded ferrimagnetic core that relays magnetic flux during wireless power transfer operations. Magnetic alignment structures in the case may position the ferrimagnetic core in the case in a high magnetic flux density region between the power transmitting device and the power receiving device. The ferrimagnetic core relays the magnetic flux between a transmitting coil in the power transmitting device and a receiving coil in the power receiving device. The ferrimagnetic core may be formed in a front portion, a sidewall, or a rear wall of a case.

Accessory with a magnetic relay structure for wireless power transfer

A personal electronic device (e.g., a tablet computer) may be configured to wirelessly charge an accessory (e.g., a stylus) through a display face of the device. At least a portion of the display face may be transparent to facilitate display viewing. A wireless charging assembly disposed within the enclosure may include a core having one or more windings disposed thereon, which may be configured to generate a magnetic flux above the display face to couple to the accessory. The core may be a pot core, a modified pot core, or may have another shape, such as a PQ core. The one or more windings may be disposed on one or more posts of a pot core, or additionally or alternatively, may be disposed on another portion of the core. A metallic shield may be disposed about the wireless charging assembly, thereby surrounding multiple sides of the wireless charging assembly.

Through-display wireless charging

A wireless power system may have a wireless power transmitting device and a wireless power receiving device. The wireless power receiving device may have a receive coil that receives wireless power signals from the wireless power transmitting device and may have a rectifier that produces direct-current power from the received wireless power signals. The wireless power transmitting device may have an array of transmit coils. Each transmit coil has a respective magnetic coupling coefficient characterizing its magnetic coupling with the receive coil. The wireless power transmitting device may have control circuitry that uses the magnetic coupling coefficient values in selecting transmit coils to use in transmitting wireless power to the wireless power receiving device.

Wireless power system with coupling-coefficient-based coil selection

An inductive power transmitter is provided that includes a power transmitting coil which includes transmission circuitry coupled to the power transmitting coil. The inductive power transmitter is configured to produce an inductive power transfer (IPT) signal having an IPT power so that the power transmitting coil generates an IPT field to transfer wireless power to a power receiving coil of an inductive power receiver. The inductive power transmitter includes detection circuitry coupled to the transmission circuitry and is configured to detect one or more indications of a magnetic field strength of a leakage IPT field. The inductive power transmitter includes control circuitry configured to control the transmission circuitry while the transmission circuitry is increasing the IPT power towards a charge level sufficient to charge a battery associated with the inductive power receiver at a target charge rate.

Inductive power transmitter

Embodiments describe a receiving element that includes a ferromagnetic structure axially symmetrical around a central axis disposed along a length of the ferromagnetic structure. The ferromagnetic structure includes a groove region defining two end regions on opposing sides of the groove region, where the groove region has a smaller length than the two end regions. The receiving element also includes an inductor coil wound about the groove region of the ferromagnetic structure and in between the two end regions.

Attachment devices for inductive interconnection systems

A wireless power system may use a wireless power transmitting device to transmit wireless power to a wireless power receiving device. The wireless power transmitting device may have an array of coils that extend under a wireless charging surface. Control circuitry may supply alternating-current control signals to inverters. The inverters are coupled to resonant circuits. Each resonant circuit includes a capacitor coupled to a respective one of the coils. During operation, wireless power signals are transmitted from the coils to the wireless power receiving device through the charging surface. The capacitor associated with each resonant circuit may potentially be individually selected to enhanced uniformity of the wireless power transmitting device. The array of coils may have multiple layers and the capacitors in each layer may have different respective values.

Wireless power system with resonant circuit tuning

A wireless power transmission system has a wireless power receiving device that can be charged using multiple different types of wireless power transmitting devices. The different types of wireless power transmitting devices have power transmitting coils that exhibit different levels of magnetic coupling with the power receiving coil of the wireless power receiving device. The wireless power receiving device may include capacitors, resistors, and/or other loading circuits that can be independently switched into use depending on the level of magnetic coupling that is detected, on a rectified voltage level, on the size of the output load, and/or on information conveyed during handshaking operations to present a desired impedance adjustment at the power receiving coil so that data signal can be properly conveyed between the power receiving device and the power transmitting device.

Wireless charging system with multiple communications modes

Inductive interconnection system

Hybrid connectors that may transfer power and data with a variety of electronic devices having different types of connector interfaces, may consume a minimal amount of surface area, depth, and volume in an electronic device, and may be readily manufactured.

Hybrid connector

This disclosure relates to the inductive charging of portable electronic devices. In particular, a charging assembly is disclosed that allows a portable electronic device to be charged in multiple orientations with respect to a charging device. The charging assembly includes two or more separate inductive receiving coils. The inductive receiving coils can be arranged orthogonally with respect to one another by wrapping one or more secondary receiving coils around a ferritic core having two legs extending in different directions from a joint region. By orienting the receiving coils orthogonally with respect to one another, the likelihood of at least one of the receiving coils being aligned with a charging field emitted by a charging device increases substantially.

Wirelessly charged devices

Disclosed herein is item recommender that uses a model trained using a combination of at least visual item similarity training data and social activity training data. The model may be used, for example, to identify a set of recommended products having similar visual features as a given product. The set of recommended products may be presented to the user along with the given product. The model may be continuously updated using feedback from users to identify the features considered to be important to the users relative to other features.

E-commerce recommendation system and method

Growing community of inventors

Sunnyvale, CA, United States of America

Nan Liu