Simultaneous multi-channel near-eye display: a holographic retinal projection display with large information content

Abstract

Augmented reality (AR) near-eye displays (NEDs) are emerging as the next-generation display platform. The existing AR NED only present one single video channel at a time, same as traditional media such as TVs and smartphones. In this Letter, to the best of our knowledge, we propose for the first time a multi-channel holographic retinal projection display (RPD), which can provide multi-channel image sources simultaneously, thus greatly increasing the information content. Due to the superposition capacity of a hologram, multiple images are projected to different viewpoints simultaneously through multiple spherical wave encoding, so that the viewer can switch among playing channels very fast through eye rotation. A full-color dynamic multi-channel holographic near-eye display is demonstrated in the optical experiment. The proposed method provides a good prospect that the future AR glasses can play dozens of video channels in parallel, and the user can switch among channels freely and efficiently just through a simple eye rotation.