In this study, we introduce a design for a near-eye, wearable display (HMD: head mounted display) that can automatically control the user's interpupillary distance (IPD). In addition, we demonstrate a test-bed module for the wearable AR display based on proposed design. Both the adjustment accuracy and the viewing effect through distance matching between the user’s eyes are evaluated by the user’s experience in actual wearing of the module. We demonstrate that the distance between the left and right eye pupils can be measured and adjusted using a set of IR camera sensors and a micro-actuator module that we proposed. A half-mirror unit to be mechanically controlled for each eye is designed to combine the image displayed from the projector and an image taken by the IR camera, leading to fine adjustment of the user’s IPD. A set of images taken by the IR camera sensors is image-processed in real time to determine each pupil’s position with high accuracy under infrared light illumination. Based on the measured information, a micro-actuator module we fabricated for the test bed can automatically adjust the binocular distance to fit each viewer’s IPD. The maximum movement distance of each micro-actuator motor is ±10 mm with precision control of at least 0.5 mm. It takes about 18 seconds to calculate the user’s IPD from two IR photographs and then to accurately adjust the actual binocular distance of the module that the participant wears. Using the demonstrated test bed, a total of 50 subjects participated to confirm the accuracy in the automatic IPD adjustment with an error of 0.25% as well as the improvement of the displayed image quality and 3D immersive experience.
Electronic holographic displays can reconstruct the optical wavefront of object light, exhibiting the most realistic three-dimensional (3D) images, in contrast to conventional stereoscopic displays. In this paper, we propose a novel, near-eye holographic 3D display (NEHD) applicable to AR/MR/holographic devices and experimentally demonstrate the proposed module’s performance with 360° full-viewed holographic 3D movie at 30 fps. To realize high-quality of reconstructed holographic 3D (H3D) images, we also propose an advanced amplitude-modulating (AM) encoding scheme suited for the proposed amplitude-modulating NEHD. We experimentally verify that the new hologram-encoding approach can improve the image quality of H3D reconstructions through quantitative statistical analyses, by using evaluation methods for H3D images that are suggested in the paper. Two holograms at different viewing directions of the same 3D scene are designed to be displayed onto the proposed NEHD prototype for two eyes of an observer, respectively. The presented techniques for the proposed NEHD enable the observer to experience the depth cue, a realistic accommodation effect, and high-quality H3D movies at each eye.
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