Apple has filed for a patent (number US 20250028179 A1) for “lens mounting structures for head-mounted devices.” It involves the rumored “Apple Glasses,” an augmented reality/virtual reality head-mounted display (HMD) that would be more akin in design to regular eyeglasses than the Vision Pro.
About the patent filing
Apple says that HMDs may have optical modules that present images to the user’s left and right eyes. The optical modules may move with respect to each other to accommodate different user interpupillary distances.
Each optical module may have a lens barrel, a display coupled to the lens barrel that generates an image, and a lens mounted to the lens barrel through which the image is viewable from an eye box.
Summary of the patent filing
Here’s Apple’s abstract of the patent filing “A head-mounted device may have optical modules that present images to the user’s left and right eyes. The optical modules may move with respect to each other to accommodate different user interpupillary distances. Each optical module may have a lens barrel, a display coupled to the lens barrel that generates an image, and a lens mounted to the lens barrel through which the image is viewable from an eye box.
“The lens may be a multi-element lens formed from molded lens elements such as molded polymer lens elements. A lens element may be provided with protrusions that form lens tabs. The lens tabs may have coplanar lens tab surfaces that mate with corresponding coplanar mounting surfaces in the lens barrel. Alignment marks may be formed on the protrusions and/or other portions of the lens.”
