Apple patents AR glasses that use a metal pattern to keep eye tracking aligned
Apple describes a head-mounted display system that uses transparent waveguides to project images into a user's eyes while allowing them to see the real world. The device includes a specific metal pattern on the waveguide that acts as a reference point, or fiducial, for cameras tracking the user's gaze. This setup allows the system to automatically check and adjust the alignment of the eye-tracking components.
In the filing’s own words
A head-mounted device may have displays that provide images. Waveguides may be used in conveying the images to eye boxes. The waveguides may overlap lenses in a glasses frame or other head-mounted support structure. The waveguides and lenses may be transparent. This allows real-world objects to be viewed from the eye boxes. Infrared-light reflectors may overlap the lenses. Gaze tracking system light sources may supply infrared light that reflects from the infrared-light reflectors to the eye boxes to illuminate a user's eyes. Gaze tracking system cameras capture gaze tracking images of the eyes from the eye boxes to track the user's gaze. Fiducials associated with the infrared-light reflectors may be monitored using the gaze tracking system cameras. This allows components such as the gaze tracking system cameras to be calibrated.
What exactly they claim (claim 1)
1. A head-mounted device, comprising: a support structure; a display coupled to the support structure and configured to produce a display image and to emit the display image in a first direction; a waveguide coupled to the support structure and configured to receive the display image and to output the display image in a second direction that is opposite to the first direction; a gaze tracker coupled to the support structure; and a metal coating on the waveguide, wherein the metal coating is patterned to form a fiducial coupled to the waveguide, and wherein the gaze tracker is configured to capture an image of the fiducial in the first direction.
Facts
- Company
- Apple (Apple Inc.)
- Official title
- Head-mounted display systems with gaze tracker alignment monitoring
- Patent number
- US12736819B2
- Application number
- 18604849
- Filed
- Mar 14, 2024
- Granted
- Sep 15, 2026
- Inventors
- 3
- Claims
- 17
Classified under
G02B 27/0172 Physics & computingG02B 6/102 Physics & computingH04N 13/383 Electricity & electronicsG02B 2027/0123 Physics & computingG02B 2027/0178 Physics & computingMore from Apple in AR, VR & displays
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Summaries are simplified from the filing’s own abstract and first claim. A patent filing is not a product announcement.
Patent data and drawings: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Nebula is not affiliated with or endorsed by the USPTO.