An intrinsically eye safe approach to high apparent brightness augmented reality displays using digital holography

Abstract

Achieving the luminance of real-world scenes is a challenge for many display technologies when seeking to deliver an experience that approaches the dynamic range of the human eye. Digital holography offers a number of significant advantages in this respect, due both to the high optical efficiency, and the ability to redistribute available luminous flux to individual points as required. This property is especially important when the aim is to present sparse digital elements that need to be clearly perceived against a bright real- world background in an AR or MR application. In this work we show that a configuration capable of delivering apparent display brightness equivalent to that of the daytime sky is achievable with components viable for a consumer head mounted display, and identify the constraints necessary to ensure that such a device would be intrinsically eye safe.