A toroidal‐lens designed structure for static type table‐top floating image system with horizontal parallax function

Abstract

A new structure of horizontal parallax table‐top floating image system with toroidal‐lens optical film was developed. In this design, the circular arranged pico‐projectors limit the angular resolution of this system and display the floating image for surrounding viewing zones. In addition, the pinhole array and toroidal‐lens layer compose the optical film in the system and correspond with each other; both of them could be considered as a repeatable unit to control the spatial resolution of image. After passing through the optical film, the direction, position, shape, and divergence angle of light field could be controlled as fan ray, which has a widely scattered angle in latitude and high directivity in longitude direction. Moreover, to confirm the optical properties, the proposed structure was built in the commercially optical software, LightTools v8.3, which is widely used in the simulation of light distribution. Based on the imaging principle and the inverse light tracking method, displaying floating image with circular viewing zones would be achieved.

Review on tabletop true 3D display

“…However, because of the conical‐shaped screen, the size of display area is severely limited, and the resolution varies from the bottom to top of the screen. To alleviate those problems, a table surface with five optical functional layers was simulated . All five layers are planar in order to create a larger display area.…”

“…To alleviate those problems, a table surface with five optical functional layers was simulated. 22,31 All five layers are planar in order to create a larger display area. One of the five layers, composed of a microlens surface and a sub-lens surface, has the function of anisotropic diffusing.…”

Aerial Projection 3D Display Based on Integral Imaging

“…There are many types of floating 3D displays. For example, the light-field display can present floating glass-free 3D images in the air, but more projectors are needed [1][2][3], or scanning [4][5][6], rotating [7][8][9][10][11], and processing are required. Therefore, the system of the light-field display is quite complex and expensive.…”