When Apple introduced Apple Vision Pro at WWDC23, Mike Rockwell, VP, Technology Development Group, revealed that their Spatial Computer was supported by 5,000 patents. Patently Apple will be covering as many as we can in future reports as they become available. Today, the last patent day of 2023, the US Patent & Trademark Office published 7 or more  patent applications relating to Vision Pro that we link to below covering Head Pose technology;  Displays With Viewer Tracking For Vertical Parallax Correction; Prescription Lens Enrollment and Switch for Optical Switching for Optical Sensing; Gaze-Based Exposure and more.

Controlling A Device Setting Using Head Pose

A head-mounted device may use head pose changes for user input. In particular, a display in the head-mounted device may display a slider with an indicator. The slider may be a visual representation of a scalar quantity of a device setting such as volume or brightness. Based on head pose changes, the scalar quantity of the device setting and the position of the indicator on the slider may be updated. The direction of a head movement may correspond to the direction of movement of the indicator in the slider. The scalar quantity of a device setting may only be updated when gaze input from a user targets the slider. The slider may be displayed in response to gaze input targeting an icon associated with the slider.

Apple's FIG. 4 below is a diagram showing how a user may change their head pose to provide user input to head-mounted device (HMD, Vision Pro). Head-mounted device 10 may interpret changes in head pose as user input to a slider in a variety of ways.

For more details, review Apple's patent application 20230418371.

Displays With Viewer Tracking For Vertical Parallax Correction

Apple's invention relates to an electronic device may include a stereoscopic display with a plurality of lenticular lenses that extend across the length of the display. The lenticular lenses may be configured to enable stereoscopic viewing of the display such that a viewer perceives three-dimensional images. The display may have different viewing zones that account for horizontal parallax as a viewer moves horizontally relative to the display. The display may be dimmed globally, blurred, and/or composited with a default image based on the detected vertical position of the viewer. The display may render content that compensates for the real-time vertical positions of multiple viewers. For details, review patent application 20230421749

Prescription Lens Enrollment and Switch for Optical Switching for Optical Sensing

Apple's invention relates to a system can perform a method to identify when one or more lenses are the wrong prescription for the user. In some embodiments, the system notifies the user to switch prescription lenses or initiates an enrollment process for the lenses. In some embodiments, the system can identify the prescription of a lens and compare the identified prescription to one or more enrolled prescriptions for the user (e.g., previously defined in user settings associated with user profile). When the identified prescription of the lens does not match an expected enrolled prescription for the user), the system can notify the user to switch prescription lenses. When there are no enrolled prescriptions for the user, the device can prompt the user to enroll the lens. For more details, review Apple's patent application 20230417627

Gaze-Based Exposure

Apple's invention relates to a processing pipeline and method for mixed reality systems that utilizes selective auto-exposure for a region of interest in a scene based on gaze and that compensates exposure for the rest of the scene based on ambient lighting information for the scene. Images may be generated for display that provide an exposure-compensated, foveated high dynamic range (HDR) experience for the user.

Apple's patent FIG. 1 below illustrates an example head-mounted device (HMD) in a mixed or augmented reality (MR) system.

Apple's patent FIG. 4E above illustrates an image captured using the gaze-based exposure methods described herein. Embodiments expose the image based on gaze so that the region of interest can be viewed in detail, but apply exposure compensation to the rest of the scene so that scene exposure remains constant. As the viewer glances between the two boxes, the camera is exposing for what the user is looking at, but the image that the viewer sees is exposure compensated based on ambient lighting of the scene. The dashed circle in FIG. 4E shows a foveated region exposed by the camera based on a point of gaze determined by an eye tracking system. The image outside of the foveated region is exposure compensated according to ambient light information for the scene. Blended virtual content may be included in the scene that is exposure compensated according to ambient light information for the scene.

For more details, review Apple's patent application 20230421914

Other HMD Related Patent Applications Published Today

20230418019: Electronic Device With Lens Position Sensing

20230418372: Gaze Behavior Detection

20230421945: Method and System for Acoustic Passthrough