Apple Inc.

Google Inc.

Rong Liu

Eugene Antony Whang

Christopher J Stringer

Victor H Yin

Jun Qi

Yu P Sun

Ziruo Hong

Mookyung Son

Daming Xu

Joshua A Spechler

Chenhua You

Wenyong Zhu

Xinyu Zhu

Glenn K Trainer

Dinesh C Mathew

Pedro Mari

Hung Sheng Lin

Ethan Larry Huwe

Molly J Anderson

Erik L Wang

Robert Y Cao

Craig C Leong

Mingxia Gu

Bradford J Zercoe

Yi Huang

Gemma Alexandria Roper

Kurt R Stiehl

Gabriel G Marcu

Clarisse Mazuir

Florence W Ow

Craig Matthew Stanley

Hao Chen

Paul J Thompson

Benjamin A Cousins

Yung-Yu Hsu

Jason C Della Rosa

ByoungSuk Kim

Zhenbin Ge

Noah Denis Bedard

Simon K Porter

Felipe Bacim De Araujo E Silva

John H Sheerin

Eric Lee Benson

Blake M Coughenour

Stuart John Wood

Xiaofeng Tang

Samuel G Parker

Ling Han

Zhenyue Luo

Wei Lv

Erik A Zweigle

Juan He

Suraj P Gorkhali

Janos C Keresztes

Yufeng Yan

Heesang Suh

Ka Ho P Poon

Mahesh Krishnamurthi

Qingbing Wang

Pee Khiam So

Jia Chen Pang

Syed Farhan Mohiuddin

Chungjae Lee

Ethan W Juhnke

Sungwon Bae

Michael C Sulkis

Wei He

Edward H Kang

Andrew Baek

Shaofeng Liu

Yong Seok Choi

Tao Zhan

Tavys Q Ashcroft

Rohit Kumar Pandey

Christopher P Child

Yanming Li

Meizi Jiao

Javier Mendez

Abdeslam Hafidi

Bosheng Zhang

Shiqi Chen

Jason Brinsfield

Sherry Cao

Corey S Provencher

Joel C Yamasaki

Thomas O Henry

Meiting Wu

Marie Charisse White

Morteza Amoorezaei

Mengyang Liang

Dana F Segler, Jr

Robert J Durand

Brian P Graves

Benjamin M Oztalay

Bryce E Wallis

Pavlo Pidlypenskyi

Xiangtong Li

Wr Jamarulan Wr Ramli

Yupin Sun

Xue Wang

An electronic device such as a voice-controlled speaker device may have a cylindrical shape. The electronic device may include a housing, a speaker in the housing configured to emit sound, and a display in the housing. The display may include a substrate, light-emitting components mounted on the substrate, an opaque support structure mounted on the substrate, a diffuser that is mounted to the opaque support structure and that overlaps the light-emitting components, a display cover layer that overlaps the diffuser, and foam that is interposed between the opaque support structure and the display cover layer. The light-emitting components may be arranged in groups that have the same layout and orientations that vary as a function of angular position relative to the center of the display. The foam and/or an adhesive layer may be formed from two or more discrete pieces that have footprints with complementary protrusions.

Fabric-covered electronic device with light-emitting components

An electronic device may include a projection display that has a high transparency when the display is turned off. The high off-state transparency may create the appearance of the display being invisible in the off-state, which may be desirable in certain electronic devices. The projection display may include an adjustable diffuser, a spatial light modulator that projects images onto the adjustable diffuser, a mirror that reflects the images from the spatial light modulator to the adjustable diffuser, and a light source that provides light to the spatial light modulator. The projection display may also include an adjustable opacity layer that is controlled based on detected ambient light levels. The projection display may also include an adjustable reflectivity layer. The adjustable diffuser and/or light source may be pixelated to increase contrast in the projection display.

Display with off-state transparency

A display may have a pixel array such as a liquid crystal pixel array. The pixel array may be illuminated with backlight illumination from a direct-lit backlight unit. The backlight unit may include an array of light-emitting diodes on a printed circuit board. The backlight unit may include first, second, and third light spreading layers formed over the array of light-emitting diodes. A color conversion layer may be formed over the first, second, and third light spreading layers. First and second brightness enhancement films may be formed over the color conversion layer.

Displays with direct-lit backlight units

A system may have an exterior display. The exterior display may display symbols that correspond to intended actions for the system or instructions for nearby viewers. The exterior display may include an array of light-emitting diodes, a collimator, a one-way filter to prevent sunlight from washing out the display, and a cover layer. The one-way filter may include a microlens array and a masking layer. The collimator is configured to collimate light from the array of light-emitting diodes and provide the collimated light to the one-way filter. The microlens array receives the collimated light and focuses the collimated light through a plurality of holes in the masking layer. In this way, the majority of display light is passed through the one-way filter towards a viewer. However, the majority of ambient sunlight is blocked by the masking layer, thus preserving a high contrast for the exterior display even in bright sunlight.

System with one-way filter over light-emitting elements

A spatial light system that may, for example, be used to project image content onto surfaces of a room. The system may include two or more projection units for emitting light onto surfaces within a room. The system may include a controller and two or more projection units, each module including an LED array, an array of light pipes, and a condenser lens. Two or more projection units may be connected to a flexible strip that provides power and data (e.g., serial data) to the projection units. Two or more flex strips may be connected together. The flex strips provide a serially-connected, flexible modular architecture for spatial light systems that allow the projection units to be conformed to a variety of configurations and shapes.

Spatial light system

A system may have a display that includes a plurality of light sources such as light-emitting diodes. The display may be an exterior display that is routinely operated in daytime conditions where ambient light levels are very high. To increase contrast in an exterior display, the display may include a sunlight blocking element. A static sunlight blocking element may include a louver film with asymmetric light blocking portions. The system may include an ambient light sensor that is configured to determine ambient light levels. Based on the detected ambient light level, control circuitry in the system may adjust one or more adjustable components in the display. The display may include an adjustable diffuser that has at least two states with different haze levels. The display may include an adjustable tint layer that has at least two states with different transmission levels.

Adaptive exterior display

A display may have a pixel array such as a liquid crystal pixel array. The pixel array may be illuminated with backlight illumination from a direct-lit backlight unit. The backlight unit may include an array of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) on a printed circuit board. The display may have a notch to accommodate an input-output component. Reflective layers may be included in the notch. The backlight may include a color conversion layer with a property that varies as a function of position. The light-emitting diodes may be covered by a slab of encapsulant with recesses in an upper surface.

Direct-lit backlight units with light-emitting diodes

An electronic device may have a camera. The camera may capture still and moving images. A camera status indicator may be included in the electronic device. The camera status indicator may emit light to indicate when the camera is in use capturing video or other images. The camera status indicator may have multiple light-emitting devices such as light-emitting diodes or lasers. The light-emitting devices may have different colors. Clear encapsulant may cover the light-emitting devices. A white polymer wall or other light recycling structure may run along an outer peripheral edge of the encapsulant. A light diffusing coating layer may coat an outer surface of the clear encapsulant. Light reflections from the status indicator may be reduced in captured images.

Electronic device with camera status indicator

To enable a display to display different content to different viewers, a display may include a time-sequential directional backlight unit. The backlight unit may emit light in different directions in different configurations. In a first state, the backlight unit emits light at maximum brightness in a first direction. In a second state, the backlight unit emits light at maximum brightness in a second direction that is different than the first direction. The backlight unit may repeatedly and rapidly switch between the different states. The first direction may be towards a first viewer whereas the second direction may be towards a second, different viewer. Therefore, each viewer receives backlight in one of the configurations and does not receive backlight in the other configuration. In synchronization with the backlight unit, the liquid crystal display panel may repeatedly switch between displaying content for the first viewer and displaying content for the second viewer.

Display with a time-sequential directional backlight

An electronic device such as a voice-controlled speaker device may have a housing. A speaker and other input-output components and control circuitry may be mounted within the housing. Light-emitting components may emit light that passes through a curved upper top cap portion or other housing structure. The light-emitting components may be interconnected using a flex circuit on a curved substrate or may be mounted on a planar circuit board. A subset of the light-emitting components may be rotated to improve color balance. Optical structures such as light guides, lens, microlenses, and/or a diffuser layer may be disposed over the light-emitting components to promote light mixing, to reduce hotspots, and to improve contrast on the top cap. The diffuser layer may be suspended using a support structure having baffle members to constraint the angular spread of the emitted light. Illuminated or persistently visible glyphs may be displayed in or near the top cap portion.

Electronic device with visual feedback

An electronic device such as a voice-controlled speaker device may have a housing. A speaker and other input-output components and control circuitry may be mounted within the housing. Light-emitting components may emit light that passes through a curved upper top cap portion or other housing structure. Some of the light-emitting components may be rotated to improve color balance. Optical structures such as a dual-shot injection molded light control plate may be disposed over the light-emitting components to promote light mixing, reduce hotspots, and improve contrast on the top cap. The light control plate may have an upper clear layer with bell-shaped cavity portions configured to help spread light in the lateral direction and may have a reflective lower layer with dish-shaped portions configured to reflect and diffuse light back towards the top cap. The surface of the dish-shaped portions may be provided with microtextured structures to help scatter light.

Electronic device with low profile optical plate for outputting visual feedback

Voice-controlled speaker device with visual feedback

Growing community of inventors

Sunnyvale, CA, United States of America

Rong Liu