In late 2021 Microsoft and Samsung entered into a multi-year project regarding Mixed Reality Headsets and smartglasses. Samsung had acquired DigiLens, a smartglasses company in 2019. A DigiLens video is presented below.

In January 2024 Patently Apple posted a report titled "Two recently published Microsoft patents illustrate that Smartglasses is one of their next Device Projects."

Earlier this month, three new Microsoft patents were published in the U.S. and Europe covering Cyclopean-Eye cameras and transparent antennas for smartglasses. By working with Samsung, Microsoft is hoping to bring quality smartglasses to market ahead of Apple.  

Smartglasses & HMDs with Cyclopean-Eye Camera

Microsoft's patent application relates to head-mounted displays implementing a cyclopean-eye sensor system. One example includes a head-mounted display comprising a cyclopean-eye sensor system. The head-mounted display further comprises a processor and memory storing instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to receive depth data and image data from the cyclopean-eye sensor system and to render first and second images using the depth data and the image data, wherein the first image, the second image, and the image data depict different angular views of a scene.

A cyclopean-eye sensor system can be implemented in various ways. Some aspects include head-mounted displays designed with a multi-modal cyclopean-eye sensor system that includes one or more sensors capable of providing multi-modal data signals.

In some implementations, the multimodal cyclopean-eye sensor system includes at least two different types of sensors located proximate to one another. The multi-modal cyclopean-eye sensor system can be used to synthesize binocular views for display to both the user s eyes for various applications, including AR/VR.

In previous HMD designs, this is typically performed by dual cameras located on either side of a user s temples, emulating the perspectives of the user s eyes. Additionally, the multi-modal cyclopean-eye sensor system can be used to perform runtime computations for various applications, including but not limited to head tracking, hand tracking, eye tracking, scene/ environment understanding (SU/EU), and object understanding (OU).

The cyclopean-eye sensor system can mitigate many shortcomings found in HMDs utilizing distributed sensors. These deficiencies include but are not limited to inaccurate calibration, complex computations, and inefficient computational redundancies. The cyclopean-eye design simplifies the hardware of the HMDs and expands the application scope of such devices to high accuracy, large work volume, and flexible SWaP utilization.

For example, current AR/VR devices tend to rely on passive visual sensors in lieu of ToF sensors to reduce the devices SWaP utilization. However, such implementations can lead to unreliable and inaccurate performance in low light settings, including common indoor environments that tend to have many texture-less surfaces. By implementing a single localized cyclopean-eye sensor system instead of multiple distributed sensors, SWaP constraints are easier to achieve.

Microsoft's cyclopean-eye invention was covered in two patent applications (20240275940 and  2024167723) published on August 15 2024.

Another smartglasses patent from Microsoft titled "Optically Transparent Antennas on Transparent Substrates" was published on August 8, 2024 under #20240266722.

Microsoft was years ahead of Apple regarding an HMD and yet completely failed at making it a viable product. After Vision Pro debuted, Microsoft basically shut down their HoloLens device team. This is why Microsoft has teamed up with Samsung for future smartglasses so as to ensure their future device has a chance of surviving.