Retinal projection type super multi-view stereoscopic head-mounted display

Abstract

We have previously proposed the retinal projection type super multi-view head-mounted display (HMD) which provides natural 3D images for the observer. This previous HMD induces the accommodation of the human eye by using the super multi-view in 3D display technology and the observer can view 3D images. However, there is a problem that the depth range of 3D images by the accommodation is limited to about 2 meters. To overcome this problem, we propose the binocular stereoscopic HMD pairing the previously proposed HMDs. To pairing HMDs, the convergence, one of the factors of 3D vision, is activated and the depth range can be expanded. The proposed HMD consists of holographic optical elements and DMDs using as high-speed display devises and optical shutters. The accommodation is induced by synchronizing the optical shutter and the display device and projecting different parallax images onto the retina by time multiplexing. The convergence of the eye is also induced because the images are projected onto a different position of the retina of each eye. In order to verify expanding the depth range with the proposed HMD, we made a prototype 3D-HMD on an optical bench. As a result of experiments using the prototype system, we confirmed that the proposed HMD can expand the depth range. Since the proposed HMD uses more factors of 3D vision than the previous HMD, the observer can view more distant 3D image. In addition, the accommodation-convergence conflict, the problem of binocular stereoscopic HMD, is solved with the proposed HMD.