Yesterday the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of 32 newly granted patents for Apple Inc. In this particular report we briefly cover a single patent titled "Modifying Virtual Content to Invoke a Target user State" of mind. Whether this is some form of "Mindfulness Session" app in the making or something far more reaching is difficult to assess in this single patent. For some, this could be a puzzle to conquer. And, as always, we wrap up this week's granted patent report with our traditional listing of the remaining granted patents that were issued to Apple this week. 

Modifying Virtual Content to Invoke a Target User State 

At around the 1: 25: 39 mark of the WWDC23 Keynote, Apple's VP of Human Interface, Alan Dye, described one aspect of the new Apple Vision Pro. He was describing a "Mindfulness" session with visuals expanding into space to create a moment of calm. Our cover graphic is a screenshot from that segment.

Apple was granted a patent yesterday that appears to border on that kind of user state experience.

In Apple's patent FIG. 6, Apple describes a future HMD (Apple Vision Pro) working with a home server of sorts, in some cases iCloud to control a user's experience. The Vision Pro can use sensors and eye tracking to understand the user's state of mind. In FIG. 7., we see "user model  #700" which is  configured to provide projected reactions.  In other words, the user model includes historical information including past user state data such as measured state, target state, resultant state, and modified CGR content when viewing particular CGR content in order to correlate the modified CGR content to the projected reactions of the user.

For instance, if the past user state data corresponding to sensor information associated with a user indicates that the resultant state of the user is scared when the electronic device 124 presents CGR content that includes spiders, then the electronic device 124 can presume that, in the future, the resultant state of the user will also be scared when the electronic device (HMD) presents spiders to the user. In some implementations, the HMD and/or the controller device generates the user model based at least in part on a first resultant reaction by the user to first modified CGR content and a second resultant reaction by the user to second modified CGR content.

In another example, Apple notes that the past user state data may include common reactions for a majority of users such as a resultant state of scared when the HMD presents CGR content that is intended to scare users such as spiders. As another example the past user state data may include other common reactions for the majority of users such as a resultant state of happiness when the HMD presents CGR content that is intended to make the user happy such as a puppy.

Further, the HMD and/or the controller presents a virtual agent with a neural expression to the user via the one or more displays.

Next, the HMD and/or the controller device determines the current measured state of the user to be calm and obtains a request from the user to obtain a target state of happiness.

In some implementations, the HMD and/or the controller device determines what CGR content to generate in order to invoke the target state of happiness by matching the target state and/or the current measured state to a pre-existing entry from the user model #700.

In some implementations, the HMD and/or controller tries to find a pre-existing entry where the target state matches the resultant state and the CGR content from the pre-existing entry is closely related to the CGR content that is currently presented by HMD when the user requests to invoke the target state.

The HMD (Apple Vision Pro) along with an Apple Watch can monitor the user's heart rate, blood oxygen levels, blood pressure to better understand the user's current state to assist in using chart 700 above to assist in calming a user.

Apple's granted patent 11703944 isn't an easy one to wrap your head around, as it's describing something that doesn't yet exist. Is this a possible "Mindfulness Session" app to be? While I can't definitively determine that this is the goal of the system that Apple is describing, Apple's FIG. 7 is the biggest clue that this is generally the direction of the invention.

Review Apple's granted patent in full here. 

This Week's Remaining Granted Patents