The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of 47 newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today. In this particular report we cover an optical system for a future Head Mounted Display device, 5G millimeter wave antennas for future iDevices, a Project Titan autonomous vehicle system and more. We wrap up this week's granted patent report with our traditional listing of the remaining granted patents that were issued to Apple today.

Optical System for an Apple HMD

Apple's newly granted patent (#10,203,489) covers their invention relating to optical systems and, more particularly, to optical systems for head-mounted displays.

The display system and optical system may be supported by a housing that is worn on a user's head. The head-mounted display may use the display system and optical system to present images to the user while the housing is being worn on the user's head.

The display system may have a pixel array that produces image light associated with the images. The display system may also have a linear polarizer through which image light from the pixel array passes and a quarter wave plate through which the light passes after passing through the linear polarizer.

The optical system may be a catadioptric optical system having one or more lens elements formed from clear materials such as glass or plastic and having reflective structures. The lens elements may include a plano-convex lens element and a plano-concave lens element. The plano-convex lens element may have a convex surface and an opposing planar surface. The plano-concave lens element may have a concave surface and an opposing planar surface that faces the planar surface of the convex lens element.

A partially reflective mirror may be formed on a convex surface of the plano-convex lens element. A reflective polarizer may be formed on the planar surface of the plano-convex lens or the concave surface of the plano-concave lens. An additional quarter wave plate may be located between the reflective polarizer and the partially reflective mirror.

An illustrative system in which a head-mounted display such as a pair of virtual reality glasses is used in providing a user with virtual reality content is shown in patent FIG. 1 above. As shown in FIG. 1, virtual reality glasses (head-mounted display) #10 may include a display system such as display system #40 that creates images and may have an optical system such as optical system #20 through which a user (see, e.g., user's eyes #46) may view the images produced by display system by looking in direction (#48).

For more details on this granted patent click here. In late November Patently Apple posted a report titled "Apple Files a Europe Patent for an HMD with Emphasis on Smartglasses that applies a user's Eye-Glasses Prescription. The European patent shared some common patent figures with today's granted patent, especially FIG. 1 above.

Project Titan Related

Apple's newly granted patent (#10,204,517) titled "Wireless vehicle system for enhancing situational awareness" generally relates to mobile electronic equipment such as equipment in a vehicle and, more particularly, to systems in which a vehicle obtains situational awareness information from wireless transmissions from nearby vehicles.

Apple's patent FIG. 2 noted above is a diagram showing how multiple pieces of equipment in vehicles traveling on a road may wirelessly interact with each other; FIG. 8 shows an illustrative display screen in a vehicle that is displaying an alert to provide a driver with enhanced situational awareness such as a diagram of the driver's vehicle and nearby vehicles driving on the same road; FIG. 9 shows an illustrative display screen in a vehicle that is displaying an alert to a driver concerning the presence of a nearby emergency vehicle.

Patently Apple covered this invention as a patent application back in March 2017. Check out our original report for more details here.

iPhone with Millimeter wave antenna arrays

Apple's newly granted patent (#10,205,224) covers their invention relating to Millimeter wave communications, which are sometimes referred to as extremely high frequency (EHF) communications, involve communications at frequencies of about 10-400 GHz. It's one of the key ingredients for a future 5G iPhone.

Apple wins a Design Patent for Earphone Packaging

The Remaining Patents granted to Apple Today

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