Apple patent filing involves an ‘immersive computer-generated reality experience’

Apple has filed for yet another patent (20190392830) — one of dozens — for a “method and system for representing a virtual object in a view of a real environment.” 

Dubbed “system and method for user alerts during an immersive computer-generated reality experience,” it applies to the company’s augmented reality work on iOS devices and could apply to the rumored “Apple Glasses,” an augmented readily/virtual reality headset expected to debut in 2020, 2021, or 2022, depending on which rumor you believe.

The Apple Glasses will likely to be tethered to an iPhone. They may also include an in-house chip that’s similar in concept to the “system-on-a-package” component in the Apple Watch and a new operating system, internally dubbed “rOS” for “reality operating system.

In the new patent filing, Apple notes that users of a head-mounted display may be subject to varying levels of immersion in a virtual or augmented environment. Head-mounted displays may present images and audio signals to a user, which, to varying degrees, may impair a user’s ability to concurrently detect events in their physical surroundings. Apple thinks it can do better than current models.

Here’s a summary of the latest patent filing: “Systems and methods for computer-generated reality user hailing are described. Some implementations may include accessing sensor data captured using one or more sensors; detecting a person within a distance of a head-mounted display based on the sensor data; detecting a hail event based on the sensor data; and responsive to the hail event, invoking an alert using the head-mounted display.”