Apple granted patent for an augmented reality display for an Apple Car

Let the Apple Car rumors roll on. Apple has been granted a patent (number 10,922,886) for an “augmented reality display” for a vehicle as an added safety and convenience feature.

Such a display/system could be able to fill in for limitations of the sensors (e.g., areas of the real environment that are blocked by buildings or terrain, or are out of range) to extend the AR into the full real environment in front of the vehicle (i.e., within the driver’s field of vision). For example, a route may be displayed, including parts of the route that are occluded by objects or terrain in the real environment. 

Here’s the summary of the patent: “An AR system that leverages a pre-generated 3D model of the world to improve rendering of 3D graphics content for AR views of a scene, for example an AR view of the world in front of a moving vehicle. By leveraging the pre-generated 3D model, the AR system may use a variety of techniques to enhance the rendering capabilities of the system. 

“The AR system may obtain pre-generated 3D data (e.g., 3D tiles) from a remote source (e.g., cloud-based storage), and may use this pre-generated 3D data (e.g., a combination of 3D mesh, textures, and other geometry information) to augment local data (e.g., a point cloud of data collected by vehicle sensors) to determine much more information about a scene, including information abou