Laser-Illuminated Sub-Image Scanning High Resolution Light Engine

Physical Optics Corporation (POC) proposes to address the poor resolution and limited field-of-view of current head-mounted-display (HMD) light engines, which are based on miniature CRTs, LCDs, microdisplays, and laser scanned displays. POC proposes afull color high resolution HMD light engine based on laser illumination, a high speed CMOS-LCD spatial light modulator (SLM), with either line image scanning or frame scanning. The proposed approach offers superior resolution (5k x 4k pixels) from arelatively low resolution CMOS-LCD SLM, taking advantage of its high refresh speed and relatively slow line image or subframe scanning. The proposed technology is made commercially attractive by its unique integration of currently available commercialcomponents and low cost fabrication techniques. The proposed effort will focus on developing a compact Laser-Illuminated Sub-Image Scanning (LASIS) light engine demonstration unit in which COTS components such as RGB laser diodes and CMOS-LCDmicrodisplays will be integrated with POC's liquid crystal digital scanners to generate color sequential full resolution images for current U.S. Air Force simulator HMDs. In Phase I, POC will demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach throughdesign, analysis, and an experimental proof-of-concept demonstration, so that in Phase II we can build a preproduction prototype light engine.The proposed compact, lightweight, high resolution HMD light engine will advance head mounted display technology.Applications include virtual environment training, avionics, medicine, education, CAD/CAM, video conferencing, entertainment, and video games.