Apple has been granted a patent (number 11,127,182 for a “detecting physical boundaries.” It’s a safety feature involving the rumored “Apple Glasses,” an augmented reality/virtual reality head-mounted display (HMD).
About the patent
It involves techniques for alerting a user, who is immersed in a virtual reality environment, to physical obstacles in their physical environment are disclosed. A virtual reality device immerses a user in a virtual environment.
As Apple notes, a user may become so immersed in a virtual environment that, while moving about the virtual environment, the user collides with adjacent physical objects in the physical environment. For example, while wearing a virtual reality head mounted device, a user may move about a large (virtual) room in virtual reality, but in the process, collide with a physical wall of the physical room in which the user is physically located. Apple doesn’t want you to get injured while using its HMD if/when it arrives.
About Apple Glasses
When it comes to Apple Glasses, such a device will arrive in 2022 or 2023, 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 eventually 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 cU.S.tom-build Apple chip and a dedicated operating system dubbed “rOS” for “reality operating system.”
FIG. 2 depicts a physical environment within which a user device is disposed and a virtual reality environment is displayed by the user device.
