Air Mounted Eyepiece

2017. 10. 22

Air Mounted Eyepiece: Design Methods for Aerial Optical Functions of Near-Eye and See-Through Display using Transmissive Mirror Device

Abstract:
We propose a novel method of implementing an optical see-through (OST) head-mounted display (HMD) with a wide viewing angle and high resolution for augmented reality, called an Air Mounted Eyepiece (AME). In past years, many optical elements, such as transmissive liquid-crystal display (LCD), half-mirror, and waveguide have been adopted for OST-HMD. To achieve the AME design, we employ an off-the-shelf HMD and Transmissive Mirror Device (TMD), which is used in aerial real-imaging systems, instead of conventional optical elements. In the proposed method, we present ‘Virtual lens,” which has the same function as the HMD lens in front of the eyes. By using TMD, it is possible to shorten the optical length between the virtual lens and the eye. Therefore, the aerial lens provides an immersive image with see-through capability. In this paper, we describe a detailed design method of TMD-based HMD, and compare it to previous half mirror-based HMD and convex mirror-based HMD. Then, we construct a fabricated prototype of the OST-HMD using TMD. We aim to contribute to the field of human-computer interaction and the research on eyepiece interfaces by discussing the advantages and the limitations through simulations and experiments.

Kazuki Otao, Yuta Itoh, Kazuki Takazawa, Hiroyuki Osone and Yoichi Ochiai
University of Tsukuba, Pixie Dust Technologies, Inc.

Air Mounted Eyepiece”は,拡張現実のための新しい光学シースルーHMDです.今までのHMDに使用されてきた光学素子の代わりに,透過型ミラーデバイス (TMD) と呼ばれる光学素子を採用しました.通常,空中映像システムや空中インタラクションシステムに用いられるTMDHMDに応用する初めての試みの1つです.既存のHMDTMDを組み合わせることで,空中にHMDと同じ機能を作り出し,広視野角な映像を提供します.

大峠和基, 伊藤優太, 高澤和希, 大曽根宏幸, 落合陽一
筑波大学, ピクシーダストテクノロジーズ株式会社

Yoichi Ochiai, Kazuki Otao, and Hiroyuki Osone. 2017. Air Mounted Eyepiece: Design Methods for Aerial Optical Functions of Near-Eye and See-Through Display using Transmissive Mirror Device. In ArXiv e-prints. 7 pages. URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.03889

Kazuki Otao, Yuta Itoh, Kazuki Takazawa, Hiroyuki Osone, and Yoichi Ochiai. 2018. Air Mounted Eyepiece: Optical See-Through HMD Design with Aerial Optical Functions. In Proceedings of the 9th Augmented Human International Conference (AH ’18). ACM, New York, NY, USA, Article 1, 7 pages. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3174910.3174911

Kazuki Otao, Yuta Itoh, Kazuki Takazawa, Hiroyuki Osone, and Yoichi Ochiai. 2018. Transmissive Mirror Device based Near-Eye Displays with Wide Field of View. In SIGGRAPH ’18 Emerging Technologies (SIGGRAPH ’18). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2 pages. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3214907.3214908