A Study on Technology Trends for AR Glasses Using Topic Modeling

Augmented Reality (AR) technology is a crucial element in constructing the metaverse and digital twin, as it overlays information on real-world visuals. AR glasses serve as essential tools and devices for delivering such services. This paper aims to review and compare the trends and major technological areas of AR glasses in Korea and the United States by utilizing patent literature and conducting Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling. Patent documents already include international standard technology classification codes. However, for comprehensive research and understanding the technological themes from a perspective of convergent studies and technological development, relying solely on these codes might be challenging. Therefore, LDA topic modeling, widely used for semantic topic-based classification of documents, was employed to analyze over 3000 AR glasses-related patents. The analysis of patent documents revealed that Korea focuses on the “application areas of the device,” while the United States emphasizes the “optical technology constituting the device”.