Earlier this year, Apple was granted a patent pertaining to the use of VR headset beyond gaming and other forms of entertainment. Apple had envisaged using a mixed reality headset with a VR keyboard and a word processor. Simply put, the use case was to edit and create documents. The picture below shows the arrangement in detail.

The head-mounted display can be used to overlay virtual key labels onto a touch screen display on a physical keyboard. It is also possible to use the touch screen display on tablets or any other electronic devices. The US Patent & Trademark Office has published a patent application. The granted patent has mentions of ten patent claims including head-mounted display, a virtual keyboard, a camera on the keyboard and an array of sensors including, proximity sensor, a light-based sensor, a capacitive sensor, a force sensor, a touch sensor, and a camera.

In the latest addition, Apple has detailed a new set of 20 patent claims which includes innovations for the earlier patent. The latest patent reveals a new arrangement for increased privacy. The secret mode displays the content on users head-mounted display. Meanwhile, the physical display will be showing a wallpaper or a dummy document. With this arrangement, only the user will see secret content while the physical keyboard will act as a decoy.

Apple’s latest patent is numbered 20190174088 and was first published by the U.S Patent Office in February 2019. Apple is working towards creating a slew of features and products that make use of augmented reality and mixed reality. Only recently the company revealed ARKit 3 which offers features like Motion Capture.

[via PatentlyApple]

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