Apple has been granted a patent (number 10,698481) for “glint-assisted gaze tracker” that would improve the efficiency of the rumored “Apple Glasses,” an augmented reality/virtual reality/mixed reality headset.
Virtual reality (VR) allows users to experience and/or interact with an immersive artificial environment, such that the user feels as if they were physically in that environment. For example, virtual reality systems may display stereoscopic scenes to users in order to create an illusion of depth, and a computer may adjust the scene content in real-time to provide the illusion of the user moving within the scene.
When the user views images through a virtual reality system, the user may feel as if they are moving within the scenes from a first-person point of view. Similarly, mixed reality (MR) or augmented reality (AR) systems combine computer generated information (referred to as virtual content) with real world images or a real world view to augment, or add content to, a user’s view of the world.
The simulated environments of VR and/or the mixed environments of MR may thus be utilized to provide an interactive user experience for multiple applications, such as applications that add virtual content to a real-time view of the viewer’s environment, interacting with virtual training environments, gaming, remotely controlling drones or other mechanical systems, viewing digital media content, interacting with the Internet, or the like.
However, the reliability of an AR/VR/MR device depends on how well it detects and reacts to a user’s eye movements. Apple wants such tracking methods to be pristine.
When it comes to Apple Glasses, such a device will arrive next year or 2022, depending on which rumor you believe. It will be a head-mounted display. Or may have a design like “normal” glasses. Or it may be available in both. The Apple Glasses may or may not have to be tethered to an iPhone to work. Other rumors say that Apple Glasses could have a custom-build Apple chip and a dedicated operating system dubbed “rOS” for “reality operating system.”
Here’s the summary of the invention: “Methods and apparatus for glint-assisted gaze tracking in a VR/AR head-mounted display (HMD). Images of a user’s eyes captured by gaze tracking cameras may be analyzed to detect glints (reflections on the cornea of light sources that illuminate the user’s eyes) and the pupil. The glints are matched to particular ones of the light sources.
“The glint-light source matches are used to determine the cornea center of the eye, and the pupil center is determined. The optical axis of the eye is reconstructed from the cornea center and the pupil center, and the visual axis is then reconstructed from the optical axis and a 3D model of the user’s eye. The point of gaze on the display is then determined based on the visual axis and a 3D model of the HMD.”
