For the Quest: Meta wants to patent its version of Apple’s iSight

Meta has obtained a patent from the European Patent Office (EPO) for an invention that may sound familiar to some users of the Vision Pro: a system for an “immersive reality headset” in which sensors ensure that a social presence (“social presence”) can be displayed externally. In practice, this means – and can also be seen from the images in the patent – that the Facebook parent is trying to protect its intellectual property rights for technology such as iSight.

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The patent was filed in May

EyeSight is known as the Vision Pro function that allows users to continue to be seen as participants in the room even when wearing glasses. To do this, faces are scanned during setup using Vision Pro’s external sensors and a face and eye model is created. The eyes then appear on an external screen, which is not yet present in Metas products such as the Quest 3. However, EyeSight is not really popular so far as the screen looks quite dark and pixelated – Apple has already updated the software several times and will probably continue to do so.

Still, looking at it, Meta seems excited about the idea Patent Number WO2024102264 about which the blog Patently Apple First reported. The exact name is: “Sensors embedded in immersive reality headsets to enable social presence” and it was registered on May 18, several months after the Vision Pro was released in early February. To implement such a function, which does not yet have a name in Meta, the search would have to be completely rebuilt. There is currently no room for a front display, since the sensors or cameras needed for the mixed reality mode (passthrough) are located there.

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Meta collects facial expressions

Meta describes its patent as a “method for updating a subject avatar with facial expression collected in real time” – which is exactly what Apple is doing with EyeSight. According to the social media giant, this technology involves receiving signals from a sensor on the facial interface of the headset that indicate the movement of the facial muscles of the headset’s user, with the signals determining the user’s facial expression. Sensors in the “facial interface of the headset based on a machine learning algorithm” have been trained to associate facial expression with the movement of facial muscles.

All of this is for “immersive reality” applications that are “hosted on a remote server” – i.e. in the cloud. At Apple, these services usually run on the device – also for data protection reasons. As with all patents, they do not necessarily result in products. They are also registered for legal reasons. It is also unclear whether Apple will object to the idea of ​​Meta. Apple itself has filed thousands of patents for Vision Pro.

(B.Sc.)