Design of a 65-degree collimating lens for lightguide-based AR glasses

Area of Science:

• Optical Engineering
• Augmented Reality Systems
• Microdisplay Technology

Background:

• Augmented reality (AR) systems require advanced optical components for immersive visual experiences.
• Collimating lenses are crucial for projecting microdisplay images to the viewer's eye in AR devices.
• Existing designs face challenges in achieving high resolution and minimizing optical aberrations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To design and evaluate a collimating lens for an AR system with a 1.03-inch microdisplay.
• To achieve high angular magnification and excellent image quality.
• To develop metrics for assessing line warping and lateral color aberrations.

Main Methods:

• Designed a collimating lens with a 65° field angle and F-number of 2.046.
• Utilized a 1.03-inch microdisplay with an active area of 18.432 mm x 18.432 mm.
• Developed line resolution and lateral color resolution metrics for performance evaluation.

Main Results:

• The collimating lens provides an angular magnification of 12.22.
• Achieved zero Seidel aberrations for the lightguide.
• Line resolution of 0.407 arcmin and lateral color resolution of 0.675 arcmin were recorded, surpassing human eye resolution.

Conclusions:

• The developed collimating lens design effectively projects microdisplay images for AR applications.
• The lens design demonstrates superior resolution and minimal aberrations, enhancing AR visual quality.
• This optical design contributes to the advancement of high-performance AR systems.