Re: Virtual/Augmented/Mixed Reality News & Discussions
Posted: Mon Jul 05, 2021 4:01 am
A new way to make AR/VR glasses look more like regular glasses
A metaform is a new optical component that Rochester researchers say can combine with freeform optics to create the next generation of AR/VR glasses, headsets and eyewear. (University of Rochester illustration / Michael Osadciw)
“Image” is everything in the $20 billion market for AR/VR glasses. Consumers are looking for glasses that are compact and easy to wear, delivering high-quality imagery with socially acceptable optics that don’t look like “bug eyes.”
University of Rochester researchers at the Institute of Optics have come up with a novel technology to deliver those attributes with maximum effect. In a paper in Science Advances, they describe imprinting freeform optics with a nanophotonic optical element called “a metasurface.”
The metasurface is a veritable forest of tiny, silver, nanoscale structures on a thin metallic film that conforms, in this advance, to the freeform shape of the optics—realizing a new optical component the researchers call a metaform.
The metaform is able to defy the conventional laws of reflection, gathering the visible light rays entering an AR/VR eyepiece from all directions, and redirecting them directly into the human eye.
Nick Vamivakas, a professor of quantum optics and quantum physics, likened the nanoscale structures to small-scale radio antennas. “When we actuate the device and illuminate it with the right wavelength, all of these antennas start oscillating, radiating a new light that delivers the image we want downstream.”
A metaform is a new optical component that Rochester researchers say can combine with freeform optics to create the next generation of AR/VR glasses, headsets and eyewear. (University of Rochester illustration / Michael Osadciw)