Apple Vision Pro debuted at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2023 as the company’s first-ever mixed reality (MR) headset. However, its sales haven’t been what the Cupertino-based tech giant may have been expecting. High price, lack of native applications, and outright little interest have been speculated as the reasons behind the low adoption of the device. However, that seems to have had little effect on Apple’s ambitions, as evident by a newly filed patent by the company for a future version of the Vision Pro with lenses that may be tunable for vision correction.
Apple Vision Pro Tunable Lenses Patent
An Apple patent submitted to the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and published on August 22 describes a head-mounted device with fluid-filled adjustable lenses. Both lenses would be aligned corresponding to the user’s respective eyes. When a user – suffering from presbyopia (farsightedness) – is wearing the device, the optical power of adjustable lenses may be tweaked to counteract it.
The patent also suggests that the fluid-filled lenses may account for various situations. For instance, they may adjust to provide a 0 power diopter when the user is looking far away but may adjust to provide the optimal amount of power when the viewfinder is pointed towards a nearby object, to make up for their farsightedness.
The said device may be paired to another electronic device that would send it sensor data and instructions for changing the focal point based on the obtained information. It would do so upon receiving a trigger, such as a notification, gesture or button press, from the user. Its suite of sensors could include 3D Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR), radio frequency sensors, infrared or visible light cameras, gaze tracking sensors, force and contact sensors, in addition to gyroscope, ambient light sensors and more.
If this Apple Vision Pro model is developed, it could potentially make the Zeiss inserts redundant, which the company currently bundles with its MR headset for people with vision impairments.