A glass-plastic hybrid optical system was designed and built for a direct view helmet-mounted display. This eyepiece incorporates a glass element, two aspheric plastic elements, and an imbedded diffractive surface to achieve high optical performance while reducing cost and weight. The 30 degree FOV design outperforms a previous all-glass design. The resolution requirement is driven by a 24-micron pixel Active Matrix Electroluminescent (AMEL) image source. Several design forms were considered, and the final design was chosen to facilitate manufacturing. Proof of principle units were fabricated using diamond-turned PMMA lenses. Test data are included which compare the diamond-turned and injection molded lenses. Fabrication and alignment tolerances, metrology and manufacturing issues are discussed, and both predicted and measured performance data are presented.
A diffractive optical surface was inserted in a wide field of view ultraviolet sensor to increase the aperture and waveband of the system with no increase in size or weight. The diffractive optical surface was etched in sapphire using binary optics fabrication techniques.
We present an overview of diffractive optics technology and the advantages this technology offers when applied to head-mounted displays (HMD). We show especially the impact on weight reduction when diffractive elements are used to correct chromatic aberrations in full-color HMDs. We discuss the effect of higher diffractive orders on image quality and show how to model these effects. Finally, we present the results of a demonstration of a diffractive element in a conventional monochromatic HMD, compare the performance of the hybrid and conventional systems, and demonstrate the validity of our model.
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