Scanning pupil approach to aspheric surface slope error tolerancing in head-up display optics

Abstract

We present a novel approach to tolerancing slope errors of aspheric surfaces in relay optics of typical avionics head-up displays (HUD). In these systems, a beamlet entering the pilot eye occupies only a tiny fraction of HUD entrance pupil/eyebox with a typical diameter of 125mm. Consequently the beam footprint on any HUD optical surface is a small fraction of its clear aperture. This presents challenges to HUD tolerancing which is typically based on parallax (angular difference in line of sight between left and right eyes) analysis. Aspheric surfaces manufactured by sub-aperture grinding/polishing techniques add another source of error – surface slope error. This type of error not only degrades image quality of observed HUD symbology but also leads to its “waviness” and “floating” especially noticeable when a pilot moves his head within the HUD eyebox. The suggested approach allows aspheric surface slope error tolerancing that ensures an acceptable level of symbology “waviness”. A narrow beamlet is traced from a pilot eye position backwards through the HUD optics until it hits the light source. Due to the small beamlet size, slope error of the aspheric surface acts primarily as an overall tilt/wedge that deviates the beam and causes it to shift. The slope error is acceptable when this shift is not resolved by a pilot eye. The beamlet is scanned over entire eyebox and field of view and the slope error tolerance is established for several zones in the aspheric surface clear aperture. The procedure is then repeated for each aspheric surface.