Light-efficient augmented reality display with steerable eyebox

Abstract

We present a novel head-mounted display setup that uses the pinhole imaging principle coupled with a low-latency dynamic pupil follower. A transmissive LCD is illuminated by a single LED backlight. LED illumination is focused onto the viewer's pupil to form an eyebox smaller than the average human pupil, thereby creating a pinhole display effect where objects at all distances appear in focus. Since nearly all the light is directed to the viewer's pupil, a single low-power LED for each primary color with 0.42 lumens total output is sufficient to create a bright and full-color display of 360 cd/m 2 luminance. In order to follow the viewer's pupil, the eyebox needs to be steerable. We achieved a dynamic eyebox using an array of LEDs that is coupled with a real-time pupil tracker. The entire system is operated at 11 msec motion-to-photon latency, which meets the demanding requirements of the real-time pupil follower system. Experimental results effectively demonstrated our headmounted pinhole display with 37° FOV and very high light efficiency, equipped with a pupil follower with low motion-to-photon latency.

Foveated near-eye display using computational holography

“…We provided basic proof of concept demonstrations using off-line computed holograms and precise positioning of the camera during recording of the experimental images. Details of real-time pupil tracking 26 , 27 and real time computation of CGH for generic architectures 9 are discussed elsewhere. Fast hologram computation for eye-centric architecture will be the subject of future publications.…”

Aberration‐free pupil steering Maxwellian display with wide‐view broadband polarization converters

“…Another promising architecture is Maxwellian display or retinal scanning display. [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] The basic concept of Maxwellian display is to focus the spatially modulated, collimated light onto the viewer's pupil and form images on retina, as Figure 1A shows. Because all the imaging light is directed onto the viewer's eye, the light efficiency of a Maxwellian display is nearly 100% in theory.…”

40‐5: Distinguished Paper: A Scanning Waveguide Display with 100° of FOV

“…But the eye box size is tiny as the consequence. Several methods have been proposed to enlarge the eye box [6][7][8], but they typically complicate the system design and the improvement is still limited.…”

“…Another solution is to use retina scanning to directly form image on the retina, usually through laser beam scanning (LBS) [5][6][7][8]. The basic configuration is similar to the projection type, with a combiner and the image source.…”