Apple patent involves enhancing the iPad Pro’s LiDAR scanning feature for room, house design

Apple has been granted a patent (number 11551422 B2) for “floorplan generation based on room scanning). It involves enhancing the iPad Pro’s LiDAR scanning features for room and house design.

The 2020 iPad Pro added a breakthrough LiDAR Scanner that delivers depth-sensing capabilities, opening up more pro workflows and supporting pro photo and video apps. The LiDAR Scanner, along with pro cameras, motion sensors, pro performance, pro audio, the Liquid Retina display and powerful apps, made the iPad Pro a great device for augmented reality (AR),

About the patent

In the patent, Apple says there are here are numerous hurdles to providing computer-based systems to automatically generate floorplans, room measurements, or object measurements based on sensor data. The sensor data obtained regarding a physical environment (e.g., images and depth data) may be incomplete or insufficient to provide accurate floorplans and measurements. 

For example, indoor environments often contain an assortment of objects, such as lamps, desks, chairs, etc., that may hide the architectural lines of the room that might otherwise be used to detect edges of a room to build an accurate floorplan. As another example, images and depth data typically lack semantic information and floorplans and measurements generated without such data may lack accuracy.

Apple says existing techniques don’t allow for automatic, accurate, and efficient generation of floorplans and measurements using a mobile device, for example, based on a user capturing photos or video or other sensor data while walking about in a room. What’s more, existing techniques may fail to provide sufficiently accurate and efficient floorplans and measurements in real time (e.g., immediate floorplan/measurement during scanning) environments.

Apple wants to overcome such issues when it come to the measuring features of the iPad.

Summary of the patent

Here’s Apple’s abstract of the patent: “Various implementations disclosed herein include devices, systems, and methods that generate floorplans and measurements using a three-dimensional (3D) representation of a physical environment generated based on sensor data.”