Meta Platforms Technologies, LLC

Facebook Technologies, LLC

University of Central Florida Research Foundation, Inc.

Oculus, Vr, LLC

Fenglin Peng

Jacques Gollier

Ying Geng

Lu Lu

Yusufu Njoni Bamaxam Sulai

Babak Amirsolaimani

Mengfei Wang

Brian M Wheelwright

Yun-Han Lee

Junren Wang

Wai Sze Tiffany Lam

Jianru Shi

Giuseppe Calafiore

Scott Charles McEldowney

Barry David Silverstein

Oleg Yaroshchuk

Alexander Koshelev

Garam Young

Yuge Huang

Andrew John Ouderkirk

Shin-Tson Wu

Maxwell Parsons

Weichuan Gao

Zhimin Shi

Sihui He

Guanjun Tan

Douglas Robert Lanman

Robin Sharma

Evan Mark Richards

Tanya Malhotra

Yang Yang

Gregory Olegovic Andreev

Dong Chen

Linghui Rao

Yingfei Jiang

Tao Zhan

Miaomiao Xu

Liangyu Qiu

Fangwang Gou

Wanli Chi

James Ronald Bonar

Shizhe Shen

Jasmine Soria Sears

Yu Shi

Cheonhong Kim

Gang Li

Kevin James MacKenzie

Dianmin Lin

Renate Eva Klementine Landig

Changwon Jang

Yang Zhao

Daniel Guenther Greif

Anurag Tyagi

Xiayu Feng

Hsien-Hui Cheng

Agnes Lee

Michael Sean Mounier

Xingzhou Tu

Nicholas John Diorio, Jr

Hannah Noble

Jacques Gollier, Jr

Scott Charles Mceldowney

Yishi Weng

Samara Kate Sytsma

Yu-Jen Wang

Anqi Ji

Ghost images can interfere with eye tracking in a system that uses folded optics, such as is an artificial-reality display. Optical elements, such as waveplates and/or polarizers, can be used to attenuate or eliminate light causing the ghost images.

Enabling eye tracking in pancake lens optics

An illuminator for illuminating a display panel includes a lightguide with an array of buried slanted bulk reflectors that out-couple portions of the light beam propagating in the lightguide through one of the lightguide surfaces. Polarization beam-splitting slanted surfaces may be used to provide polarized output. Such an illuminator may be used with a reflective display panel operating by polarization. The beam-splitting slanted surfaces operate as a polarizer, providing polarized illuminating light. The light reflected by the reflective panel may propagate back through the illuminator, and the polarization beam-splitting slanted surfaces may operate also as analyzer.

Geometrical waveguide illuminator and display based thereon

A device includes a display configured to generate an image light. The device also includes a waveguide optically coupled with the display and configured to guide the image light to an exit pupil of the device. The waveguide includes a grating including a birefringent material, and a birefringence of the grating is configured to increase along a pupil-expanding direction of the device.

Optical combiner with uniform illuminance throughput

An illuminator for a display panel includes a slab of transparent material for propagating illuminating light between outer surfaces of the slab, an out-coupling grating supported by the slab for out-coupling portions of the illuminating light along one of the outer surfaces of the slab, and an amplitude and/or phase mask for forming an array of light spots from the out-coupled illuminating light portions downstream of the focusing element for illuminating pixels of the display panel. The array of light spots may be repeated at a distance from the mask due to Talbot effect. A beam redirecting element such as a tiltable reflector and/or a steering surface may be provided to shift the lateral location of the illuminating light spots.

Patterned light illuminator for a display panel

A waveguide is provided. The waveguide includes a substrate having two outer surfaces for propagating a beam of light in the substrate by reflecting the beam from the two outer surfaces. The waveguide includes at least one polarization volume hologram (PVH) grating to couple light in and/or out of the waveguide. The PVH grating may be a multi-layer PVH grating with graded birefringence.

Waveguide with polarization volume hologram grating

Various embodiments set forth light emission display elements, and display devices that include such display elements. In some embodiments, a display element includes an electroluminescent light source and a pair of reflective elements that form a resonant cavity for a particular range of wavelengths and/or a particular polarization of light. One or both of the reflective elements can include meta-reflectors, such as anisotropic meta-reflectors or chiral meta-reflectors. An optional waveplate can be placed between the reflective elements to adjust the polarization state of light emitted by the display element.

Light emission display element and device with polarized and angularly-controlled output

A device includes a first-type liquid crystal (LC) lens configured to provide a first optical power that is variable in a first step resolution. The device also includes a second-type LC lens coupled with the first-type LC lens, and configured to provide a second optical power that is variable in a second step resolution. The first step resolution is smaller than the second step resolution. A total optical power of the device is a sum of the first optical power and the second optical power, and is variable in the first step resolution.

Varifocal system using hybrid tunable liquid crystal lenses

A system includes a diffractive optical element including at least one substrate and a grating structure. The grating structure is configured to diffract a first light having an incidence angle within a predetermined range, and the at least one substrate is configured to reflect a second light. The system also includes a polarization selective mechanism configured to generate images based on the first light and the second light, respectively.

Optical system for multi-view eye-tracking

A directional illuminator includes a light source, a pupil-replicating lightguide, and a tiltable reflector coupling the light source to the pupil-replicating lightguide. The exit beam angle of the light outputted by the pupil-replicating lightguide follows the in-coupling angle, and accordingly depends on the tilting angle of the tiltable reflector. The directional illuminator with steered light beam may be used to illuminate a display panel. Steering the illuminating light by the tiltable reflector enables one to steer the exit pupil of the display device to match the user's eye location(s).

Directional illuminator and display device with pupil steering by tiltable reflector

A pupil-replicating lightguide includes a slab of transparent material, a switchable out-coupling grating for out-coupling portions of image light to propagate towards an eyebox, and a switchable tracking grating for redirecting tracking light carrying an eye image towards an eye tracking camera. One of the two gratings may be turned ON while the other is turned OFF, in a time-sequential manner, allowing the combined use of the pupil-replicating lightguide for carrying image light and eye tracking light.

Eye tracking with switchable gratings

An optical device includes an optical waveguide and a plurality of reflective polarizers. The plurality of reflective polarizers include a first reflective polarizer and a second reflective polarizer disposed inside the optical waveguide so that the first reflective polarizer receives light propagating inside the optical waveguide, redirects a first portion of the light in a first direction, and transmits a second portion of the light in a second direction non-parallel to the first direction. The second reflective polarizer receives the second portion of the light from the first reflective polarizer, redirects a third portion of the light, and transmits a fourth portion of the light. A ratio between the first portion and the second portion of the light has a first value and a ratio between the third portion and the fourth portion of the light has a second value distinct from the first value.

Optical waveguide beam splitter with reflective polarizers for display

An example eye-tracking optical assembly includes a light source for illuminating an eye, a first diffraction type polarizing beam splitter (DT-PBS), and a second DT-PBS, wherein the first DT-PBS is configured to direct, based on polarization, a first portion of light from the second DT-PBS towards an eye-tracking detector.

Eye tracking system

An example optical assembly includes a display, a light source for illuminating the display, and a diffraction type polarizing beam splitter (DT-PBS) configured to direct light from a light director, wherein the DT-PBS is polarization sensitive and configured to direct, based on polarization, a first portion of light towards the display.

Illumination system

A display device with a transparent illuminator and an liquid crystal (LC) display panel is disclosed. The transparent illuminator includes a light source and a transparent lightguide, which may be based on a slab of transparent material with zigzag light propagation of the illuminating light in the slab and/or a transparent photonic integrated circuit with singlemode ridge waveguides for spreading the illuminating light in a plane parallel to the plane of LC display panel. The lightguide includes a plurality of grating out-couplers whose position is coordinated with positions of LC pixels for higher throughput. A reflective offset-to-angle optical element may be provided to form an image in angular domain through the LC panel and through the transparent illuminator, resulting in an overall compact and efficient display configuration.

Display device with transparent illuminator

An optical device includes a substrate, a plurality of optical elements positioned on the substrate, and one or more switchable cells. A respective optical element of the plurality of optical elements is configured to redirect light having a first polarization and transmit light having a second polarization orthogonal to the first polarization. The plurality of optical elements includes a first optical element located on a first region of the substrate and a second optical element located on a second region of the substrate. A respective switchable cell of the one or more switchable cells includes optically anisotropic molecules. The one or more switchable cells include a first switchable cell located on a first cell location of the substrate between the first region and the second region of the substrate. Also disclosed are a display device including the optical device and a method performed by the optical device.

Active zonal display illumination using a chopped lightguide

Growing community of inventors

Redmond, WA, United States of America

Fenglin Peng