Last week, Apple released a report titled “Apple introduced the new iPad Pro with a Revolutionary LiDAR scanner that Apple first patented almost nine years ago. “The same day, the new Apple Pro iPad press release focused on the LiDAR scanner this way:” The revolutionary LiDAR scanner offers capabilities never before possible on any mobile device. LiDAR scanner measures distance to surrounding objects up to 5 meters, works both indoors and outdoors and works at the photon level at a speed of one nanosecond. “
On Thursday, the US Patent & Trademark Office released an Apple patent application that revealed more of the technical aspects of an Apple LiDAR system with the use of new anamorphic optics.
The problem is, however, that Apple is completely silent about the rationale for their new invention of LiDAR scanner. We can probably eliminate the new scanner for any current iDevice due to the potential distance for which this scanner is designed. According to Apple, “The distance to the target scene can vary from from tens of centimeters to hundreds of meters which is far from Apple’s new LiDAR for the iPad Pro which is limited to 5 meters.
Surely hundreds of meters away, the patent filing must describe a LiDAR scanner for a vehicle, right? Yes, technically it could be, even if Apple never describes a vehicle or illustrates it in the patent numbers provided.
In late 2016, Apple released a report titled “Apple is inventing an improved graphics system for games or maybe a standalone drone.”
In an article on DroneZon drones, they noted that “these LiDAR flash time-of-flight camera sensors can be used for object scanning, distance measurement, inland navigation, obstacle avoidance, gesture recognition, object tracking, volume measurement, responsive altimeters, 3D photography, augmented reality games and much more. “
Obstacle avoidance is shown above in Figure 5B of the 2016 Apple patent. This week’s patent filing refers to LiDAR scanning in the context of “ToF” or optical flight time pulses and the Apple’s ToF camera would apparently be part of the iPhone 12. This week’s patent filing is therefore forward-looking and not associated with the iPad Pro. LiDAR.
Obviously, the LiDAR scanner described by Apple’s patent filing is for a range between “tens of centimeters to hundreds of meters”, which would strongly suggest some form of vehicle or device that requires these parameters away like a camera.
The article DroneZon offers us a wide variety of applications where such a scanner could be applied to an Apple device from a headset for AR games, gesture recognition, inland navigation, 3D photography and obstacle avoidance for a consumer, commercial or military drone.
While LiDAR scanning can be used in many future applications of interest to Apple, the patent filing finally includes a tiny clue that adds to the uniqueness of their future scanner. Once the research is done, you can see that there is a common theme throughout the patent, starting with the very first patent claim and mentioned a total of 25 times. What is this clue? It’s Apple describing an “anamorphic lens.”
Suddenly, the use of an anamorphic lens opens up a whole new world and one that Apple will likely want to include in future products like the iPhone. This applies to both photography and video shooting.
The video below shows you what an anamorphic lens can do for video shooting and, interestingly enough, it happens to be explained with the help of a drone (although it is not mandatory) .
The camera being so important on any current or future iPhone, it is worth checking out because it contrasts an “integrated” lens compared to an “anamorphic” lens.
The Apple FIG patent. 1 below is a schematic side view of a LiDAR system with anamorphic optics.
The Apple FIG patent. 4 above is a schematic representation of a point spread function (PSF) of the anamorphic lens; and FIG. 5 is a schematic front view of a detector used in a LiDAR scanner.
One last thing for interest. Bringing the anamorphic lens to Hollywood changed the game, as shown in a tiny segment of the video below. For some, this could be a game-changer for Apple cameras.
Apple’s patent application 20200096615 is really a technical patent. Unless you are an optical engineer or a highly qualified technical photographer, it is not an easy read for sure. If you still want to check the patent and see more patent numbers, you can do it here.
Although we cannot guarantee when or how Apple will introduce this technology, even with a patent, our report tries to provide you with a range of applications with which it could be associated. The key to this invention lies in the distance that could be taken with this combination of LiDAR with an anamorphic lens that can reach hundreds of meters against 5 meters on the iPad Pro. This is where a drone comes in, but it could apply to any video application where the user travels, be it in a car, van or boat where speed could be a factor.
Apple’s patent that was released on Thursday was originally filed in Q2 2019 with work on this invention dating back to 2018.
While some may argue that Apple’s wide-angle cameras could do the same, there seems to be a slight difference in that your shooting with an anamorphic lens increases the width alone while the wide-angle lenses increase both width and height. The anamorphic lens also allows the photo or video to be slightly sharper because it squeezes the photo in this format. Here are two videos on the subject, the last using an anamorphic iPhone accessory lens.
Some of the inventors of Apple
Interestingly, Yuval Gerson and Alexander Shpunt are on this patent, as the inventors both came to Apple through their acquisition of PrimeSense. These engineers were largely involved in the introduction of Apple’s TrueDepth camera on iPhone X and beyond for Face ID. Shpunt was the PrimeSense CTO while Gerson was an advanced technology researcher who is now an architect of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) at Apple.
The inventors of PrimeSense managed to shrink the TrueDepth camera for an iPhone, which was incredible and so anyone could reduce a LiDAR scanner with an anamorphic lens to an iPhone, it is these inventors.
Another Apple inventor listed in this patent filing is Andrew Sutton, who is a “technology development engineer” who works on the transition from research to development.