Light field blender

Abstract

In this study, we propose a novel head-mounted display (HMD) design for near-eye light field display which achieves a see-through and wide field of view for augmented reality. In the past years, many optical elements such as half-mirror, beamsplitter, and waveguide were employed for an optical see-through display. We use a transmissive mirror device (TMD) instead of conventional optical elements. A TMD consists of numerous micro-mirrors and is usually used for real imaging system in the mid-air. We introduce a new method for the TMD plate in order to extend the previous near-eye display to the see-through display. We achieve a wide field of view and comfortable viewing by creating a point light source with a micro-lens array. Our configuration is very simple and consists of a LCD for the image source, a micro-lens array to provide the light field, and a TMD plate to provide the aerial image in front of the eye. We construct a prototype see-through display including a fabricated HMD. We verify the design of our prototype using simulations and experiments, and further discuss the challenges in building a novel near-eye, see-through display.