If you wear contact lenses when using your Apple Vision Pro, the spatial computer may one day be able to tell if a lens shifts on your eye.
About the patent
The patent is designed to address problems in current head-mounted display devices such as the Vision Pro with gaze tracking. It involves a contact lens shift detection system capable of detecting when the user of the spatial computer is wearing an excessively shifting contact lens.
If a shifting contact lens is detected, the Vision Pro will generate a notification or warning to the user and suggest possible solutions (e.g. switching to a clip-on lens that is fixed to the HMD device). What’s more, the HMD device may automatically activate a compensation mechanism or algorithm in the gaze tracker to compensate for the lens shift. And if the detected lens shift is severe, the HMD device may simply prevent operation of the gaze tracker.
Summary of the patent
Here’s Apple’s abstract of the patent: “Systems and methods are disclosed to enable detection of excessive contact lens shift in a head-mounted display (HMD) device that implement gaze tracking for the user. In embodiments, during a user enrollment process to calibrate the gaze tracking system, the HMD device analyzes key frames of the eye to estimate a first center location of the eye based on detected eye features such as the pupil, the iris, or the limbus, and a second center location of the eye based on the shape of the detected cornea.
“Shift vectors are generated based on the two center locations for individual key frames. If the standard deviation of the vectors’ magnitudes exceeds a specified threshold, excessive lens shift is detected. In response to detection of excessive contact lens shift, the HMD device may generate a notification to the user or activate compensation mechanisms.”
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