Variable Optical Transmission Lens Element (for Helmet Mounted Display (HMD) Applications)

Helmet mounted displays (HMDs) present valuable information to pilots by superposing artificial images over the pilots' normal field of vision. However, this kind of HMD must be able to operate in daylight, twilight and nighttime conditions. If the imagefrom the projection system is not bright enough, the viewer may be very difficult to read the data information from a bright background. To solve such problems, the only method in current HMD technologies is to adjust the brightness of the display panel.However, the daylight display readability requirement coupled with the twilight ambient scene visibility requirement sometimes forces display sources to exceed 5000 ft-L brightness at the display source, which causes huge power consumption and also reducesthe lifetime of the miniature display devices used in HMDs. In this program, Reveo proposes to develop an innovative LC based transreflective film to solve the above difficulties. The developed film can have double enhancement effect: attenuating theambient light while increasing reflectivity for display light, which can tremendously improve the readability of HMDs under all conditions. Since the necessary adjustable range could be smaller, the whole system could be much simpler and robust, and thepower consumption could be much lower. Reveo's variable transreflective film technology is extremely flexible and broadly applicable, it will have many dual-use applications as HMDs for military and civilian vehicles, home entertainment, advanced videogames, dazzle or glare protection in night-time flying and driving and other applications related to specialty goggles and glasses.