Invention Grant
- Patent Title: Lens array for shifting perspective of an imaging system
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Application No.: US17450128Application Date: 2021-10-06
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Publication No.: US11921286B2Publication Date: 2024-03-05
- Inventor: Noah D. Bedard , Branko Petljanski , Kathrin Berkner Cieslicki , Ricardo J. Motta
- Applicant: Apple Inc.
- Applicant Address: US CA Cupertino
- Assignee: Apple Inc.
- Current Assignee: Apple Inc.
- Current Assignee Address: US CA Cupertino
- Agency: Blank Rome LLP
- Main IPC: G02B27/00
- IPC: G02B27/00 ; G02B27/01 ; G06F3/01 ; G06T19/00 ; G06V20/20

Abstract:
This disclosure describes a novel lens system having an entrance pupil at a location matching, or nearly matching, the eye's optical system entrance pupil. The described lens system is significantly thinner than a single-aperture lens with matched entrance pupil and is achieved by using an array of camera elements. Each camera element contains camera optics called “lenslets” and a sensor (e.g., an image or depth sensor), where a lenslet can include one or more lens elements (e.g., a compound lens). Individual camera elements can be arranged such that THEIR optical axes intersect at, or near, the eye's entrance pupil location. In addition, each camera element's field-of-view (FOV) corresponds to a small sector of a large FOV. The FOVs of adjacent camera elements can be non- or slightly-overlapping so that a wide-angle image can be formed by concatenation of the individual camera element images.
Public/Granted literature
- US20220146820A1 Lens Array for Shifting Perspective of an Imaging System Public/Granted day:2022-05-12
Information query