While it will still be a little while before Apple Glass hits store shelves and (possibly) achieves the same ubiquity as AirPods, we've learned a lot about possible features from Apple's pending patents.

We have already seen that AR glasses can see the end of a tailor-made lens prescription and may perform chroma keying for custom backgrounds, but the latest patent offers something a bit more outlandish: wordless audio navigation.

First spotted by Apple Insider, the patent describes navigation that directs the user to the right path from where the sound is heard.

To give an example: the patent suggests that "to guide the user along the way while listening to music, an obvious sound source of music could be placed in front of the user, guide the user along the way, move to the user's side, and prompt the user to turn down the street."

This sounds oddly counterintuitive, but according to the patent authors, there are several potential advantages.

First of all, audio cues do not require users to stop listening to music, podcasts, or phone calls to hear directions. According to the patent, users "may prefer uninterrupted audio directions." Not only that, "during a call, audio directions may interrupt conversation, and conversation may interrupt audio directions"

. More gentle nudging, it suggests, would allow users to navigate on autopilot and prevent them from encountering an accident.

"Psychologically," the patent explains, "users tend to assume that voice instructions are correct, and as a result, they may follow instructions without much thought and cause accidents." By using sound directionality and distance as voice cues to guide the user instead of voice instructions to communicate to the user, it is up to the user to determine if it is safe to follow the directional voice cues."

Yes, I will admit that this patent has me checking my calendar to make absolutely sure it's not April 1. Even if it wasn't, we must remember that patent applications are meant to keep other companies ahead of us. As an example, last year Apple was granted over 2,700 different patents.

We are going to have to wait quite a while before we can see what Apple's AR glasses actually look like. The earliest we have heard is March-June 2021, but according to a leaked internal presentation, the debut could be as late as 2023.