KEYWORDS: 3D displays, 3D visualizations, Waveguides, Collimation, Tolerancing, Monte Carlo methods, Micromirrors, Augmented reality, Head-mounted displays, Geometrical optics
Waveguide or lightguide has the advantages of light weight, small volume and relatively high efficiency and thus is considered as one of the promising solutions to the optical combiner required for optical see-through augmented reality displays. Although there exist a few commercial products utilizing lightguides as the optical combiners, few works discussed the potential image artifacts caused by the ray bundle collimation errors in lightguides. In this paper, we discussed three causes of collimation errors in the geometrical waveguide: lightguide manufacture tolerance, change of image focal depth, and curved lightguide substrate. Based on the simulation and experiment results of the first two causes, we demonstrated two different types of image artifacts in the geometrical-waveguide-based AR displays.
Using a waveguide as an optical combiner in optical see-through head-mounted displays has obvious advantages over other types of combiners due to its low-cost, light-weighted, ultra-thin and easily manufactured nature. In this paper, an ultra-thin, glasses-like augmented reality (AR) display system is presented. The design methods of the geometrical waveguide with microstructure mirrors and its freeform collimator are discussed. With freeform optics and ultra-thin waveguide configuration, this AR display can achieve 30° field of view (FOV) with an angular resolution of as high as 1.21 arcminutes.
Conference Committee Involvement (1)
Optical Architectures for Displays and Sensing in Augmented, Virtual, and Mixed Reality (AR, VR, MR) VI
27 January 2025 | San Francisco, California, United States
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