[NJTechDiv] Non-Visual Guidance System

[Mario Brusco]

Apple invents a Non-Visual Guidance System for Navigating Indoor Malls, 
bikes through a city, walkers in unfamiliar cityscapes & more.

https://www.patentlyapple.com/2024/10/apple-invents-a-non-visual-guidance-system-for-navigating-indoor-malls-bikes-through-a-city-walkers-in-unfamiliar-cityscape.html

Posted by Jack Purcher on October 31, 2024.

Today the U.S. Patent Office published a patent application of Apple's 
titled "Adaptive Non-Visual Navigation Guidance for Electronic Devices.” 
If a user enters the navigational route into their iPhone, a user will 
be able to be guided on a walking trail without the need of looking at 
the iPhone’s map. The system could work for bikers to when to turn 
without the need of looking at a map. It could also assist someone 
navigating through a building or mall they’re unfamiliar with. 
Non-visual navigation guidance system could be used with AirPods and 
simply beep in the left or right ear when its time for a user to turn or 
when to take the stairs. The system could also work with specialized 
haptic gloves, a walking cane and other future devices that supports 
Apple’s non-visual guidance system.

In the big picture, there are many different types of electronic systems 
that enable a person to sense and/or interact with various XR 
environments. Examples
include head mountable systems, projection-based systems, heads-up 
displays (HUDs), vehicle windshields having integrated display 
capability, windows having
integrated display capability, displays formed as lenses designed to be 
placed on a person's eyes (e.g., similar to contact lenses), 
headphones/earphones,
speaker arrays, input systems (e.g., wearable or handheld controllers 
with or without haptic feedback), smartphones, tablets, and 
desktop/laptop computers.

In today’s patent, Apple covers “a non-visual navigational guidance 
system” using an electronic device, such as an electronic device having 
one or more
sensors for sensing objects in a physical environment of the electronic 
device.

Non-visual navigational guidance can be useful, as examples, to a person 
that is a visually occupied (e.g., a walker, a bike rider, or a driver 
of a car)
and/or to a visually impaired person.

The non-visual navigational guidance can be based on a three-dimensional 
map of a physical environment, and can be provided in the form of 
spatial audio
(e.g., beeps or other sounds generated to be perceived as coming from an 
indicated direction of travel) or spatial haptics (e.g., haptic taps or 
other
haptic outputs generated to be perceived as coming from a location 
associated with an indicated direction of travel).

The non-visual navigational guidance can be provided within a building, 
and can include adaptive navigational guidance around new, moved, 
moving, and/or
changed objects in the physical environment.

Some or all of the spatial haptics can be provided by a glove or other 
hand-wearable device, like Apple Watch.

Apple’s patent FIG. 3 below  illustrates an example of an electronic 
device providing adaptive non-visible navigational guidance within a 
building; FIG. 4
illustrates an example of an electronic device providing 
three-dimensional non-visible navigational guidance.


2 Glove Navigation

Apple’s patent FIG. 5 above illustrates an example hand-wearable device 
that can be used to output non-visible navigational guidance; 
  FIG. 6 illustrates
the example hand-wearable device of FIG. 5 providing tactile feedback 
representing a face of remote user.

More specifically, Apple’s patent FIG. 5 illustrates an implementation 
in which the haptic feedback device/Glove #160 is implemented as a glove 
that includes
haptic components at various locations in the glove. In the example of 
FIG. 5, the haptic feedback glove includes haptic components #162 in 
each of the
fingers and the thumb of the glove, as well as at various locations on 
the back or palm of the glove. The technology could also be applied to a 
wand, a
walking stick, a cane, a white cane, another portable electronic device.

As indicated in FIG. 5, in order to provide non-visual navigational 
guidance along the route #224, haptic components that are located, 
relative to the
other haptic components in the glove, in the direction of the route may 
be vibrated or otherwise actuated to indicate to the wearer of the 
haptic feedback
device/glove to move in the direction of the vibrating or actuating 
haptic components.

As the wearer moves their hand and/or moves along the route the pattern 
of haptic components that are vibrated or actuated may change to update 
the guidance
along the route.

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