Apple has filed for a patent (number US 20230258944 A1) for “electronic devices with liquid lenses.” It involves helping those with vision problems use the upcoming Vision Pro.
The US$3,499 (and up) Spatial Computer was announced at June’s Worldwide Developer Conference. However, it won’t go on sale until early 2024 — and, then, apparently in limited quantities.
Obviously, the Vision Pro will have lenses. Users will view images through the lenses from eye boxes. According to Apple’s patent filing, the lenses may be tunable liquid lenses. Each lens may have a lens chamber. The lens chamber of the lens may have rigid and/or flexible walls that form optical lens surfaces.
Actuators and/or pump and reservoir systems may deform the lens surfaces in response to control signals from a control circuit to tune the lens. Each liquid lens may have oil or other liquid in the lens chamber for that lens.
During operation, a user may view visual content such as virtual reality content or augmented reality content through the lenses of the head-mounted device. To accommodate users with different types of vision (nearsightedness, farsightedness, etc.) and/or to display images at different image distances (e.g., to create virtual images in different image planes), the lenses may be tunable liquid lenses.
