Earlier this month the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published a patent application from Samsung for Augmented Reality glasses that will be able to assist drivers with an application that will work in sync with a map directions application so that drivers could keep their eyes on the road while being directed when to change lanes, exist freeways and find their destination with ease. It's interesting because this is likely one of the many apps that Apple is likely working on for their future glasses device.

While Samsung's future AR glasses will use a camera on the glasses to assist in reading the road and providing realtime directions, the system may also work with vehicles offering embedded AR controls that could communicate with the glasses.

Samsung's patent FIG. 1 below is a block diagram of a system for implementing an augmented reality; FIG. 2 is a conceptual diagram of a system for implementing an augmented reality; FIG. 11 is a conceptual diagram of a system for implementing an augmented reality where the internal vehicle cameras could pick up user in-air gestures used to control a user interface or to send a command to the system; FIG. 6 is a conceptual diagram of implementation of an augmented reality where an AR direction arrow is merged with the real-world imagery of the road the driver is seeing in realtime.

Samsung notes in their filing that "a user may observe the virtual image when the particular position is placed within a field of view of the user that is viewable by using the optical coupler. For example, an actual image may be an image of an actual road, and a virtual image may be an image of a direction indicator." In a second example, Samsung notes that "an actual image may be an image of an actual gas station, and a virtual image may include an image of oil prices."

The external camera #400 illustrated in both FIGS. 2 and 11 may obtain actual image data by capturing an image of an actual object. An actual object may include a road, a building, or a sign outside the vehicle.

In FIG. 11, the camera may be a two-way camera wherein camera #110 can watch for in-air gesturing initiated by the driver to control and interface or deliver a command captured by a sensor in the camera #110.

The AR glasses have a built-in image generator that works in sync with the glass display.

Although it's a Samsung patent, it's clear that Apple having a turn-by-turn Maps app will likely adopt this  for their future AR glasses, as it's a natural AR application.

There's been a few times when I've been driving and got distracted by something occurring on the road and missed an important direction cue from Siri. Having the ability to view the directive arrows generated on Apple's future AR glasses would be great to have so that users don't miss an important direction cue on 'Maps.' 

Samsung filed for this patent in the U.S on May 6, 2019 and in South Korea in November 16, 2018 under Korean code  10-2018-0141956.