Kaan Akşit

Wide Field Of View Varifocal Near-Eye Display Using See-Through Deformable Membrane Mirrors

Accommodative depth cues, a wide field of view, and ever-higher resolutions all present major hardware design challenges for near-eye displays. Optimizing a design to overcome one of these challenges typically leads to a trade-off in the others. We tackle this problem by introducing an all-in-one solution — a new wide field of view, gaze-tracked near-eye display for augmented reality applications. The key component of our solution is the use of a single see-through, varifocal deformable membrane mirror for each eye reflecting a display. They are controlled by airtight cavities and change the effective focal power to present a virtual image at a target depth plane which is determined by the gaze tracker. The benefits of using the membranes include wide field of view (100° diagonal) and fast depth switching (from 20 cm to infinity within 300 ms). Our subjective experiment verifies the prototype and demonstrates its potential benefits for near-eye see-through displays.

Near-eye varifocal augmented reality display using see-through screens

We present a new optical design for see-through near-eye displays that is simple, compact, varifocal, and provides a wide field of view with clear peripheral vision and large eyebox. Key to this effort is a novel see-through rear-projection screen. We project an image to the see-through screen using an off-axis path, which is then relayed to the users eyes through an on-axis partially-reflective magnifying surface. Converting the off-axis path to a compact on-axis imaging path simplifies the optical design. We establish fundamental trade-offs between the quantitative parameters of resolution, field of view, and the form-factor of our design. We demonstrate a wearable binocular near-eye display using off-the-shelf projection displays, custom-designed see-through spherical concave mirrors, and see-through screen designs using either custom holographic optical elements or polarization-selective diffusers.

Membrane AR: varifocal, wide field of view augmented reality display from deformable membranes

Accommodative depth cues, a wide field of view, and ever-higher resolutions present major design challenges for near-eye displays. Optimizing a design to overcome one of them typically leads to a trade-off in the others. We tackle this problem by introducing an all-in-one solution - a novel display for augmented reality. The key components of our solution are two see-through, varifocal deformable membrane mirrors reflecting a display. They are controlled by airtight cavities and change the effective focal power to present a virtual image at a target depth plane. The benefits of the membranes include a wide field of view and fast depth switching.

Cutting-edge VR/AR display technologies (gaze-, accommodation-, motion-aware and HDR-enabled).

Near-eye (VR/AR) displays suffer from technical, interaction as well as visual quality issues which hinder their commercial potential. This tutorial will deliver an overview of cutting-edge VR/AR display technologies, focusing on technical, interaction and perceptual issues which, if solved, will drive the next generation of display technologies. The most recent advancements in near-eye displays will be presented providing (i) correct accommodation cues, (ii) near-eye varifocal AR, (iii) high dynamic range rendition, (iv) gaze-aware capabilities, either predictive or based on eye-tracking as well as (v) motion-awareness. Future avenues for academic and industrial research related to the next generation of AR/VR display technologies will be analyzed.

Steerable application-adaptive near eye displays

The design challenges of see-through near-eye displays can be mitigated by specializing an augmented reality device for a particular application. We present a novel optical design for augmented reality near-eye displays exploiting 3D stereolithography printing techniques to achieve similar characteristics to progressive prescription binoculars. We propose to manufacture inter-changeable optical components using 3D printing, leading to arbitrary shaped static projection screen surfaces that are adaptive to the targeted applications. We identify a computational optical design methodology to generate various optical components accordingly, leading to small compute and power demands. To this end, we introduce our augmented reality prototype with a moderate form-factor, large field of view. We have also presented that our prototype is promising high resolutions for a foveation technique using a moving lens in front of a projection system. We believe our display technique provides a gate-way to application-adaptive, easily replicable, customizable, and cost-effective near-eye display designs.