Future Apple Vision Pros may refocus the virtual display depending on a user’s gaze

Future Apple Vision Pros and follow-up devices may refocus the virtual display depending on a user’s gaze. Apple has filed for a patent (number US 20240211035 A1) for “Focus Adjustments Based on Attention.”

About the patent filing

The patent filing generally relates to electronic devices, and in particular, to systems, methods, and devices for detecting a distance associated with an attention of users of electronic devices. In the patent filing Apple notes that existing techniques for adjusting a focus of a view based on what a user is looking at may adjust a lens or the content of a display of an electronic device. 

Some electronic devices may lack accuracy on determining a depth of the viewer’s gaze and be able to track the user’s gaze depth in real-time in order to adjust the focus. Apple says it would be useful to to provide a means of efficiently determining precisely which part of the scene (which distance, or “depth”) the user is concentrated on for assessing an eye characteristic (e.g., gaze direction, eye orientation, identifying an iris of the eye, etc.) towards an object to adjust a focus of an external facing camera for electronic devices such as the Apple Vision Pro.

Summary of the patent filing

Here’s Apple’s abstract of the patent filing: “Various implementations disclosed herein include devices, systems, and methods that adjust a focus of a camera based on a distance associated with a determined user attention. For example, an example process may include obtaining sensor data from one or more sensors in a physical environment. The process may include determining at least one gaze direction of at least one eye based on the sensor data. 

“The process may further include determining a distance associated with user attention based on a convergence determined based on an intersection of gaze directions of the at least one gaze direction, or a distance of an object in a 3D representation of the physical environment based on the at least one gaze direction. The process may further include adjusting a focus of a camera of the one or more sensors based on the distance associated with the user attention.”