Currently, in the field of optical design, there is great interest in assessing the complexity of an optical system prior to its actual design. In this paper, we propose a method that can estimate complexity by predicting the number of optical surfaces in a lens required to achieve diffraction-limited image quality. We show that it is sufficient to select the proper number of pupil points, field, and wavelength range to estimate aberration values at the design stage. Each control point corresponds to a ray passing through the optical system. The coordinates of the intersection of the input ray with the image plane are a function of the input ray and the parameters of the optical system. Thus, we can construct a system of equations from the functions of each control point. A solution exists when the number of variables (design parameters) is equal to the number of equations (control points). The basic idea is to determine the required number of control points of the field, pupil, and wavelength range, which gives us the number of design parameters. We have plotted empirical diagram for common combinations of focal length (F'), F-number (F#), field-of-view (FOV), and wavelength range. This information can be used to determine the desired number of control points and therefore to assess the complexity of the optical system being designed. Taking into account the geometric constraints and the variety of optical materials, the result of this method cannot be final, but it can be considered as a preliminary estimate of the complexity of the optical system.
To commercialize glasses-free 3D display more widely, the display device should also be able to express 2D images without image quality degradation. Moreover, the thickness of display panel including backlight unit (BLU), and the power consumption should not be increased too much, especially for mobile applications. In this paper, we present a 10.1-inch 2D-3D switchable display using an integrated single light guide plate (LGP) without increasing the thickness and power consumption. The integrated single LGP with a wedge shape is composed of prismatic line patterns on its top surface and straight bump patterns on its bottom surface. The prismatic line patterns, which are composed of micro prisms having the light aperture on one side, act as slit apertures of parallax barriers for 3D mode. The linear bump patterns arranged along the vertical direction scatter the light uniformly together with the reflective film disposed under the LGP for 2D mode. LED light sources are arranged as edge-lit in the left and right sides of the LGP for 2D mode, and on the top edge of the LGP with the wider thickness for 3D mode. Display modes can be simply switched by turning on and off the LED light sources, alternatively. Applying the integrated single LGP, we realized a 2D-3D switchable display prototype with a 10.1-inch tablet panel of WQXGA resolution (2,560 × 1,600), and showed the light-field 3D display with 27-ray mapping and 2D display. Consequently, we acquired brightness uniformity over 70% for 2D and 3D modes.
An arrayed beam steering device enables much simplified system architectures for high quality multiview 3D displays by adapting time multiplexing and eye tracking scheme. An array device consisting of microscale liquid prisms is presented, where the prism surface between two immiscible liquids is electrically controlled to steer light beams by the principle of electrowetting. An array prototype with 280×280μm pixels was fabricated and demonstrated of its full optical performances. The maximum tilting angle of each prism was measured to be 22.5° in average, with a tracking resolution of less than 0.04°. In this paper, we report a design and fabrication of eletrowetting based prism array, opto-fluidic simulations, optical characterizations, as well as applications to achieve low fatigue 3D displays.
Recently liquid-based optical devices are emerging as attractive components in three-dimensional (3D) display for its
compact structure and fast response time. Among them an electrowetting prism array is one of the promising 3D devices.
It steers a beam, which enables to provide corresponding perspectives to observer. For high quality autostereoscopic 3D
displays the important factors are the beam steering angle and the beam profile, the optical characteristics. In this paper,
we propose a method to measure the optical characteristics of the liquid prism and show experimental results on our
prototype electrowetting prism array, which consists of prisms with 200um by 200um size. A modified 4-f system is
adopted for the proposed method. It provides two kinds of information of the optical characteristics of the liquid prism at
the image plane and at the Fourier plane. First, the proposed measurement setup magnifies the image of the liquid micro
prism array so that we can observe the status of the each prism array directly with bare eye and align a mask easily for
selecting a prism to be examined at the image plane. Secondly, the steering angle can be calculated by measuring the
displacement of the beam at the Fourier plane, where the angular profiles that have important information on the oilwater
interface is observed precisely. The principle of the proposed method will be explained, and the measured optical
characteristics from experimental results on the liquid prism we fabricated will be provided, which proves the validity of
the measurement method.
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