Kelly introduced her journey to the process of AR technology and the obstacles that she met along the way.
Enhanced Reality Technology (AR) is an incredible technology that sounds like the world of science fiction. On HDD 28, Kelly talked about her problem that she was facing the first prototype in the field of entering the AR.
Kelly is the founder and electrical / optical engineer of Kura Technology; this is a company that produces enhanced real glasses. She deeply explored this emerging technology in their speech and how to make low-cost AR glasses at home.
Kelly's next major project
It will be very surprised to mention Kelly in the past, and she has an extremely impressive resume. Kelly has studied the 的-based nuclear filling reactor, Raman spectrometer, DIY structure light camera, active EEG sensor, even There is also an emotional classifier that likes / hate.
In all of these areas, Kelly also created a hardware crack and the inventor laboratory of the R & D community, and held the corresponding hardware crack / research conference every month. Want to know what they currently do? That is a linear particle accelerator!
When dealing with the emotional favorite / annoying classifier, Kelly recognizes a portion of the less considered. She thinks that people may bring it in all times, and want to get real-time visual feedback, take this idea, she discovers the solution: AR glasses .
Solve problems related to optical and field of view
Kelly studied the current market situation, she found that optical display is one of the main problems, and another problem is the field of view (FOV). When she first started conceptualization of her enhanced reality solution, Kelly found that most optical field of optical field of optical fields were very small, basically between 10-23 degrees.
She studied optical product solutions used in other companies. One of the programs is a diffraction waveguide, which can be done very small. However, manufacturing is difficult and the field of view is about 50 degrees.
Another option is a reflective waveguide. It provides fewer diffraction and reduction of reducing imaging, but wants to align these layers in large quantities, and the field of view will be restricted again.
However, she still puts his eyes on the diffraction wave guide, but she is determined to cut the cost. Kelly knows that the field of view she wants to be manufactured can accommodate a person's size, so she sets 110 degrees at 110 degrees.
In order to achieve the goal, Kelly and her friends began using Autodesk Inventor to design. They have written their own OpenGL, C ++ and Python scripts to generate more detailed parameters and convert the surfaces corresponding to the parameters to STL files.
Using Blender open source rendering software, Kelly and her team do not need to make prototypes can also test their design.
The display panel can be analog the display panel by using the camera and checker texture in Blender, and they can simulate the location of the user's eyes and adjust the shape in Autodesk Inventor accordingly.
The team also wrote OpenGL, C ++ scripts and DirectX-based rendering engines to complete three tasks:
Picture of major rays
Perform a pixel to the rendering of pixels
Adjust the position of the viewpoint
Once they complete the virtual design, the next task is to create a physical prototype in the case of non-bankruptcy.
Bring your design into your life
Kelly's first version of AR header device
Kelly and her team have studied manufacturing programs to examine various options including CNC molds, vacuum molding, and semi-reflective metal layer coatings.
Once the lens is set, the next step is to study the choice of electronic devices. Kelly refers to the LCD and OLED panels in Oculus and Vive header devices. She finally selected LCD as a panel because its color brightness is higher than OLED. She also purchased liquid crystal panel from Alibaba and Shenzhen.
In this process, she switches from one panel to two panels. If she tilts two panels, this will provide a wider field of view. The next step is the outer casing of the 3D printhead display device.
The two programs she use are FormLab and Uprint, both have their own advantages and disadvantages. FormLab provides a great industrial prototype, but it requires a fixed screw to support head wear weight issues.
Uprint speed is very fast, but they only provide a white material that must be soaked in hydrogen peroxide for two hours to dissolve the carrier material.
The first prototype headline device includes the following parts:
Stereo RGB camera for SLAM tracking
Modified SLAM algorithm
Gift input using Leap Motion
Use Sodai or Qualcomm CPU
Improved design for 2.0 or 3.0
With the improvement of team technology, the focus of version 2.0 is optical design and more complicated. We started using a field effect crystal silicon micro-liquid crystal display with a custom design high current LED driver.
Kelly is used in the headline design (and many other designs) to be non-pupil-shaped, which provides a larger eye box and a broader focal length, and enhances electronic devices by using custom panels to drive LOCS and LEDs.
The new plate uses custom ASIC to drive LCOS and drive the LED light source through the PWM. These two steps are in synchronous, all of which are commissioned by I2C on BeagleBone Blue.
The third version of the improved goal includes narrowing the size of the header device and improving the optical quality. The latest prototype prototype has a resolution of 1080P and can be run with a mobile CPU.
The first version of the header device has become an open source project, and the second version will be used for optical module products. At the same time, Kelly and her team will focus on optimizing the third version of their superior AR glasses.
Original translation from SupplyFramehardware, author BRADLEY RAMSEY
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