Apple Inc.

Christopher M Dodson

Kenneth John Vampola

Guocheng Shao

Serhan O Isikman

Mahdi Nezamabadi

Sunggu Kang

Mahesh B Chappalli

Prashanth S Holenarsipur

Sheng Liu

Koorosh Aflatooni

Dong Zheng

Xianwei Zhao

Anand K Chamakura

Meng-Huan Ho

Tingjun Xu

Joshua A Spechler

Ove Lyngnes

Avery P Yuen

Aleksandr N Polyakov

Niva A Ran

Xingxing Cai

Jonathan B Pfeiffer

Tianbo Sun

Volodymyr Borshch

Aditya B Nayak

Steven N Hanna

Francesco LaRocca

Sixian You

Weili Chen

Shen Ren

Zhuoran Dai

Ates C Dumlupinar

Reza Tafteh

A head-mounted device may have a gaze tracking system and an optical sensor. The gaze tracking system may include a camera, ambient light sensor, or other optical sensor to determine an angle/direction of a user's gaze. The optical sensor may be a camera, directional color ambient light sensor, or other optical sensor. After determining the user's gaze, the optical sensor may be used to determine the color of an external object in the direction of the determined angle/direction. For example, the color of the external object may be determined in response to an input from the user, such as a button press, a voice command, or a blink. The determined color may be used as an input color in a virtual space or on another device.

Electronic device with optical sensor for color detection

An electronic display may include an ambient light sensor (ALS) located beneath an active area to sense ambient light above the active area. The ALS may have multiple response channels to perform fast sensing integration, which is synchronized with blanking periods of a pixel on the active area. An emission mask and a heat map may be generated for the ALS and used to generate a calibrated heat map for the ALS. The calibrated heat map of the ALS is used with display content to calculate a crosstalk compensation for the ALS.

System for ambient light sensing or compensation

An electronic device may have a display. The display may have light-emitting diode pixels or other pixels. Due to aging-induced degradation of the pixels, the output intensity and color of the pixels may vary over the lifetime of the display. Control circuitry in the device may use an ambient light sensor to measure ambient light and stray display light. The display light measurements may be used in monitoring aging effects so that the control circuitry can compensate for aging-induced pixel degradation. Display light measurements may be made over a sequence of image frames. The image frames in the sequence of frames may include white and black frames or frames of different colors interleaved with black frames. Different frame intensities may be used during measurements of stray display light to gather gamma curves for the display.

Electronic devices with display aging compensation

An electronic device may have a display with an array of pixels configured to display images for a user. The electronic device may have an ambient light sensor for gathering ambient light information. A set of the pixels may overlap the ambient light sensor so that ambient light measurements may be made on ambient light passing through the set of pixels. Control circuitry in the electronic device may control light transmission through the set of pixels so that different light transmission levels can be used in different ambient light conditions. Directional light measurements may be made by moving transparent pixels dynamically across the surface of the display overlapping the light sensor and/or by using pixelated light modulators to vary the angle of light rays measured by the ambient light sensor.

Electronic devices having light sensors overlapped by displays

A head-mounted electronic device may include a display with an optical combiner. The combiner may include a waveguide with first and second output couplers. The first output coupler may couple a first portion of image light at visible wavelengths out of the waveguide and towards an eye box. The second output coupler may couple a second portion of the image light at near-infrared wavelengths out of the waveguide and towards the surrounding environment. The second portion of the image light may include an authentication code that is used by a secondary device to authenticate the head-mounted device and/or may include a pattern that serves to prevent camera equipment in the surrounding environment from capturing accurate facial recognition information from a user while wearing the head-mounted device.

Optical systems with authentication and privacy capabilities

An electronic device such as a portable electronic device may include a single-shot alignment-free spectrometer with no moving parts. The spectrometer may include a diffractive member, such as a grating, an aperture, and an image sensor that generates data in response to incident light. The diffractive member may diffract the incident light based on its wavelength and angle of incidence, and the aperture may further encode the light. The data generated by the image sensor may be used by control circuitry in combination with correlations between spectrometer measurements and known light profiles to determine the wavelength and angle of incidence of the light. These correlations may be determined using a deep neural network. Control circuitry may adjust one or more settings of the electronic device based on the wavelength and angle of incidence, or may use the wavelength and angle of incidence to determine information regarding an external object.

Electronic devices with an alignment-free spectrometer

An electronic device may be provided with a display mounted in a housing. The display may have an array of pixels configured to display images. A display cover layer may overlap the array of pixels. A light sensor such as a color ambient light sensor may be mounted in the electronic device and may receive ambient light through an ambient light sensor window region in the display cover layer or other portion of the electronic device. A diffuser may be located between the display cover layer and the ambient light sensor. The diffuser may have a substrate such as a glass substrate. A lens layer may be supported by the substrate. The lens layer may be formed from a layer of ultraviolet-light-curable polymer in which an array of lenses has been formed. An infrared-light-blocking-and-visible-light-transmitting filter may be used to reduce infrared light reaching the ambient light sensor.

Electronic devices having ambient light sensors with lens diffusers

An electronic device may have a display with an array of pixels that display images for a user. The electronic device may have an ambient light sensor for gathering ambient light information. A subset of the pixels in the array of pixels may overlap the ambient light sensor so that ambient light passing through the subset of pixels may be measured. Each pixel may have an emission enable transistor coupled in series with a light-emitting diode. Control circuitry in the electronic device may disable the subset of pixels to reduce stray light during ambient light measurements while enabling remaining pixels in the array of pixels to display an image. Ambient light sensor circuitry may gather ambient light sensor measurements over one or more periods by using transfer transistors to transfer change from the photodetectors to charge storage capacitors formed from floating diffusions in a common substrate.

Electronic devices with ambient light sensors and emissive displays

An electronic device may be provided with an ambient light sensor. The ambient light sensor may be a color ambient light sensor or a monochrome ambient light sensor. The electronic device may have a light-emitting component such as a display. During operation of the display, the display emits light. To reduce noise due to the emitted light while measuring ambient light, the ambient light sensor may have optical structures such as wave plates and polarizers. Theses optical structures may overlap light detectors. The optical structures may be configured to prevent ambient light from reaching a first of the light detectors while allowing ambient light to reach a second of the light detectors. The ambient light sensor may be configured to receive ambient light that has passed thorough an inactive area of a display or that has passed through a pixel array in an active area of a display.

Electronic device with polarized ambient light sensor

An electronic device may be provided with a display. The display may have an array of pixels that form an active area and may have an inactive area that runs along an edge of the active area. An opaque layer may be formed on an inner surface of a display cover layer in the inactive area of the display or may be formed on another transparent layer in the electronic device. An ambient light sensor window may be formed from the opening and may be aligned with color ambient light sensor. The ambient light sensor may have an integrated circuit with photodetectors. Ambient light passing through the ambient light sensor window may be diffused by a light diffuser having one or more light-diffusing layers. Diffused ambient light may be collimated using a light collimator having one or more light-collimating layers such as layers with inwardly facing protrusions.

Electronic devices having ambient light sensors with light collimators

Growing community of inventors

Santa Clara, CA, United States of America

Christopher M Dodson