Apple has been granted patents that involve iMacs with built-in projector. Now the company has filed for a patent (number US 20230409107 A1) for other electronic devices with projectors.
About the patent filing
That patent filing hints at new devices from the company such as “smart lamps” (my term, not Apple’s), smart furniture, and standalone projects. In it, Apple notes that computers and other devices may have touch-sensitive displays that allow a user to interact with the images by providing touch input on the display.
And, yes, Apple mentions computers with touch screens. This could mean iPads, but it hints that the company is at least investigating plans for touchscreen Macs.
The tech giant says that limitations may arise with traditional displays. For example, the user may wish to interact with real-world objects in the user’s environment in addition to or instead of interacting with images on a display. Interacting with displayed images that have no connection to real-world objects may leave the user feeling removed from the user’s real-world environment.
Apple’s idea is for an electronic device with a projector for creating the appearance of animated shadows on a surface. The animated shadows may be created by projecting ambient-light-matching illumination onto the surface that blends in with the surrounding ambient light.
Select pixels in the projector may be turned off so that one or more unilluminated regions are created within the surrounding illuminated region. The unilluminated regions may appear darker than the surrounding illuminated region, giving the appearance of a shadow. Characteristics of the shadow such as shape, size, and location may be adjusted by dynamically adjusting which pixels are turned off and which pixels are turned on to provide ambient-light-matching illumination.
The projector may be mounted in a housing such as a lamp housing, a furniture housing, a standalone projector housing, and/or any other suitable housing. The projector may be co-located with a position sensor that monitors positions of the surface, objects on the surface, a user or user’s hands near the surface, and other objects.
Summary of the patent filing
Here’s Apple’s abstract of the patent filing: “An electronic device may include an ambient light sensor that measures ambient light color, a projector that projects ambient-light-matching illumination onto a surface, a user input device such as a microphone that gathers user input, and a position sensor that measures a position of the surface, a user, and/or a real-world object relative to the device.
“The ambient-light-matching illumination may create illuminated regions on the surface that blend in with the surrounding ambient light. Certain pixels in the projector may be turned off to create one or more unilluminated regions within the illuminated regions. The unilluminated regions may form apparent shadows. Control circuitry in the electronic device may adjust characteristics of the unilluminated regions by dynamically adjusting which pixels are turned off based on voice input, gesture input, and/or other sensor data.”
