Stereoscopic see-through retinal projection head-mounted display

Abstract

See-through head-mounted displays (HMDs) provide an effective capability for Mixed Reality. Some conventional monocular see-through HMDs have been developed and they can display two-dimensional virtual information. However, when two-dimensional virtual information is displayed, observers can understand it although it has no relation to real-world objects. What an observer sees needs to be augmented by virtual information in accordance with the real object. Such environments are provided by a stereoscopic see-through HMD. Though, this method has generally the drawback of dissociation between accommodation and convergence. In order to overcome this problem, we propose a new stereoscopic see-through HMD by using the principle of the modified Maxwellian View which solves the problem of the narrow viewing area. This HMD has an extremely long focal depth, and provides natural concordant accommodation and convergence. The proposed HMD consists of two pairs of an HOE and an LCD. An HOE is used as a combiner and a condenser lens which performs the Maxwellian View, and virtual 3D images can be displayed at any distance from viewer. We have verified that the accommodation consistent with the convergence by using proposed HMD. This paper describes the principle of the proposed stereoscopic see-through retinal projection HMD and also describes the experimental results.