Today the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially granted Apple a patent that relates to flexible frames for future smartglasses.

A head-mounted device, such as smartglasses, may have a head-mounted support structure. The head-mounted support may support optical systems. The optical systems may be display systems that provide images to eye boxes. Satisfactory alignment between the images and the eye boxes may help enhance image quality and viewing comfort.

In an illustrative configuration, the head-mounted device is a pair of glasses having a frame that supports transparent lenses in front of a user's face. A pair of hinges couples left and right temples to left and right sides of the frame.

The display systems may have projectors, waveguides, and optical couplers for directing left and right images to left and right eye boxes, respectively. For example, output couplers may be located on the left and right transparent lenses to direct images that are traveling within the waveguides towards the eye boxes. During operation, a user may view content from the display systems when the user's eyes are located in the eye boxes.

The frame may have a nose bridge portion that bends under pressure from a user's head while the glasses are being worn by the user.  Spring hinges or other structures may be used to supply a constant bending force from the temples to the frame over a range of head sizes.

When the nose bridge is in an unbent configuration, the images from the display systems are misaligned with respect to the eye boxes. When the glasses are being worn and the frame is being bent, the images are aligned with respect to the eye boxes.

Apple's patent FIG. 1 below is a schematic diagram of an illustrative electronic device such as a head-mounted display device (Smartglasses); FIG. 2 is a top view of a portion of the glasses.

Apple's patent FIG. 4 is a top view of an illustrative frame that is configured to flex when worn; FIG. 6 is a top view of an illustrative smartglasses temple and hinge.

For full details of this invention, check out granted patent 12222501.