One of Apple's key Eye-Tracking patents related to Vision Pro that was touched on during their WWDC23 event surfaced this week
Many times I've been asked to provide a link to "The iPhone" or "iPad" or "Apple Watch" patent, as if there's a single all-inclusive patent for these Apple devices. No such singular patents exists. What we know as an iPhone has thousands of patents making up a single device. The late Steve Jobs stated during the introduction of the iPhone, was that the iPhone was backed by 2,000 patents. Mike Rockwell, Apple’s vice president of the Technology Development Group, stated in June that there were over 5,000 patents behind Apple Vision Pro. Every conceivable aspect of Vision Pro is covered with each aspect being covered by patents from different teams.
In this same vein, Patently Apple has covered many eye-tracking patents over the years that you could find in our HMD patent archive. This week the US Patent & Trademark Office published yet another eye-tracking patent application and one that directly connected with what Mike Rockwell presented back in June.
Stray Light Mitigation in Optical Systems
One of Apple's patent applications on this subject matter relates to methods and apparatus for stray light mitigation that are in eye tracking systems that include at least one eye tracking camera (e.g., infrared (IR) cameras) positioned at each side of the user’s face, and an illumination source (e.g., point light sources such as an array or ring of IR light-emitting diodes (LEDs)) that emit light towards the user’s eyes. This was presented during the WWDC23 keynote as presented below.
Apple's patent filing further notes that the eye tracking system may, for example, be a component of a head-mounted device (HMD), for example a HMD of an extended reality (XR) system such as a mixed or augmented reality (MR) system or virtual reality (VR) system.
To mitigate stray light occlusions or artifacts caused by, for example, reflections of the LEDs off of components of the HMD, two images of the eye are captured with different groups of the LEDs enabled. The captured images can then be merged to generate an output image with the occlusions or artifacts caused by stray light mitigated or eliminated.
Alternatively, an RS sensor may be used in interleave mode to capture a first image containing odd-numbered rows with a first group of illumination sources enabled and a second group of illumination sources disabled and a second image containing even-numbered rows with the first group of illumination sources disabled and the second group of illumination sources enabled. The two images can then be merged.
Apple's patent FIG. 12A below illustrates an example head-mounted device (HMD) that may include components and implement methods as illustrated in FIGS. 1A-C; FIG. 9 is a high-level flowchart of a method for mitigating occlusions in an output image.
To review the invention's full details, review patent application 20230315201.
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