Dissertation Defense: Pengyinjie Lyu, "Perceptual Driven Approach to the Design of Statically Foveated Head-Mounted Displays"

Title: Perceptual Driven Approach to the Design of Statically Foveated Head-Mounted Displays

Abstract:

Head-mounted display (HMD) technology is developing very rapidly and has been applied in a variety of applications, however it suffered from the inherent trade-off between large field of view (FOV) and high resolution. Foveated display technology has emerged as a promising solution to address this trade-off through allocating the limiting resources differently between the region of interest (ROI) and the peripheral region. Previous works have primarily focused on dual-resolution dynamic foveation schemes, which are complex and bulky due to the requirement of multiple displays, multiple optical paths, a 2D steering mechanism, and eye tracking devices.

In this dissertation, we present a novel perceptual-driven approach to the design of a statically foveated display, taking inspiration from the characteristics of human eye and head movement mechanisms. Our approach aims to provide minimal or imperceptible degradation of perceived image resolution within regions of frequent eye movements across a wide FOV, eliminating the need for eye-tracking devices and scanning mechanisms. We detailly depicted the general approach to developing the statically foveation scheme and discussed the associated performance metrics for optimization. Building upon this approach, we designed a statically foveated immersive display by carefully controlling the spatial variation of the optical power in the eyepiece system which covers an 80-degree FOV and achieves a peak resolution of 1.5 arcminutes per pixel through a display panel of 1820 by 1820 pixels.

Furthermore, we established a novel method to evaluate the perceived performance and constructed a prototype that demonstrates excellent perceived performance of the display. Finally, we applied this method to design a statically foveated optical see-through (OST) optical system with three wedge-shaped freeform prisms. This system achieves a diagonally measured FOV of approximately 80 degrees for virtual view and a peak resolution of 2 arcminutes per pixel through a display panel of 1920 by 1230 pixels. Additionally, the sandwich structure of prism group ensures an undistorted see-through view and offers vision correction capabilities.