Today the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially published a patent application from Apple that relates to an ongoing project that could one-day possibly eliminate the need for separate costly Vision Pro prescription lenses from Zeiss. The project is focused on a liquid-based lens that could be adjusted for a user's vision impairments. 

Tunable Lens In An Electronic Device Controlled Using A Paired Electronic Device 

An HMD may include a head-mounted support structure, an adjustable lens that is coupled to the head-mounted support structure, and wireless communication circuitry configured to wirelessly receive information from a paired electronic device. The adjustable lens may be adjusted in response to the information received from the paired electronic device.

An electronic device may include at least one sensor that is configured to obtain user attention information in response to a trigger and wireless communication circuitry configured to communicate with a head-mounted device having an adjustable lens.

The wireless communication circuitry may be configured to, based at least on the user attention information, transmit information to the head-mounted device that causes an adjustment to the adjustable lens in the head-mounted device.

The lens modules in the head-mounted device may include lenses that are adjustable. The adjustable lenses may be fluid-filled adjustable lenses or other types of adjustable lenses. The adjustable lenses may be adjusted for specific viewers (e.g., to account for a prescription) or may be adjusted depending on the viewing scenario for the user.

We first covered a "Liquid Lens" system back in August 2023 wherein we introduced the video below regarding liquid lenses. 

Apple further notes, as an example, adjustable lenses in a head-mounted device may be configured to correct for presbyopia. Presbyopia makes it difficult for the eye to focus on close objects. To correct for presbyopia, the adjustable lenses in a head-mounted device may adjust a provided optical power when the user is viewing a close object.

For example, the adjustable lenses may provide an optical power of 0 diopter when the user is looking at a faraway object and may be adjusted to provide an optical power of +2 diopter (D) when the user is looking at a close object. In other words, the adjustable lenses may be adjusted to provide an optimal amount of optical power for a given situation for the user.

Apple's patent FIG. 2 illustrates a portion of a HMD. Each optical module #70 illustrated includes a corresponding lens module #72 (sometimes referred to as lens stack-up #72, lens #72, or adjustable lens #72).

Apple's patent FIG. 3 above is a cross-sectional side view of an illustrative lens module with multiple lens elements. As shown, lens module #72 includes a first lens element #72-1 and a second lens element #72-2. Each surface of the lens elements may have any desired curvature. One or both of lens elements #72-1 and #72-2 may be adjustable.

In one example, lens element #72-2 is a fixed (e.g., non-adjustable) lens element whereas lens element #72-1 is an adjustable lens element. The adjustable lens element 72-1 may be used to accommodate a user's eyeglass prescription, for example. The shape of lens element 72-1 may be adjusted if a user's eyeglass prescription changes (without needing to replace any of the other components within device 10A).

To review the full details of this invention, check out patent application 20240280817 in Safari, Chrome or Vivaldi browsers. For the MS Edge browser, the link will open in a PDF. 

Two previous Apple patents on adjustable liquid lenses: 01 and 02.