Thales

Jean-Louis Bourgain

Philippe Coni

Jean-Luc Bardon

Jean-Michel Francois

Natacha Damamme

A viewing devices includes an optical assembly comprising a display, an optical system forming of this display an image at infinity and a light guide for expanding a pupil in two spatial directions. The guide comprises three planar mirrors and two semi-reflective plates, the optical axis of the optical assembly being inclined with respect to the surface of the first planar mirror by an angle different from zero and strictly smaller than 90 degrees, the light beams output from the optical assembly propagating inside the light guide via successive reflections from the planar mirrors and the semi-reflective plates, the transmission of the light beams output from the optical assembly to outside of the light guide occurring via successive transmissions by the second semi-reflective plate.

Viewing device comprising a pupil expander including two mirrors

The field of the invention is that of optical devices allowing the superposition of an electronic image on an image coming from an external scenery. The subject of the invention is an optical device for superposing images, designed to be positioned in front of an optical module comprising at least an objective and a photosensitive surface positioned in the focal plane of said objective. The device comprises an image source, an optical relay and an optical combiner formed of two optical parts assembled via an approximately plane common face including a weakly reflective coating. The combiner has the general form of a plate with plane parallel faces, the common face being inclined at around 45 degrees to said plane faces. It has an entrance face and a opposing face that are approximately perpendicular to the plane faces, the opposing face having approximately the form of a reflecting spherical surface. This device applies in particular to night vision goggles where, when the optical combiner is placed in front of the objective of a goggles body, it allows superposition of an electronic image on the external scenery while introducing marginal attenuation.

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Merignac, France

Jean-Louis Bourgain