We present an underexplored variation of the classical optical freeform prism design that incorporates 3 optical surfaces. This optical architecture can make use of one, two, or three freeform surfaces. Our initial prototype uses a single freeform surface along with a sphere and a at surface to simplify manufacturing complexity. There are two key contributions in this paper that to our knowledge have not been achieved previously: 1) the design of a thin, 4 mm to 1 mm gradient thickness, curved freeform lightguide (nearly 4x thinner than the original freeform prism), and 2) lightguide fabrication utilizing ophthalmic machines. This particular optical design makes combined use of total internal reflections and partial reflections. The advantages of this optical architecture include the curved optical surfaces that eliminate the optical collimator requirement in at lightguides, a relatively large eyebox, and a manufacturing approach that reuses the standard ophthalmic process for fabricating the eyeside and worldside optical surfaces. The limitations of the optical design are low efficiency (~ 5%), multiple image artifacts, and lack of optical see-through.
The patent pending I-PORTTM is a highly versatile, hands-free, low profile near-eye display system. It was
originally designed with the medical market in mind as a data (monocular) or surgical (binocular) head
worn display. The concept takes advantage of a technique used with surgical loupes where they are
sometimes mounted "into" eyeglasses. The I-PORTTMdisplay module is similarly mounted onto or into the
spectacle lens of protective eyewear or sunglasses.
The I-PORTTM is capable of various fields of view and resolutions while being low profile providing
minimal obscuration. It is an ideal remote viewer for medical, military and commercial equipment. Our
system is capable of producing fields of view greater than 50 degrees in full color and can incorporate
either organic light emitting diode, (OLED) or active matrix liquid crystal display (AMLCD) image sources
of various resolutions.
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