Head-Mounted Display Alignment Monitoring
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Solution Overview
Problem
Head-mounted devices experience misalignment of optical components due to stress or drops, leading to misalignment of images relative to the user's eye boxes, causing user discomfort and suboptimal viewing experience.
Innovation Solution
The implementation of gaze tracking systems, cameras, and inertial measurement units to detect misalignment, with control circuitry applying geometric transforms to image data to warp and realign images in real-time, ensuring proper alignment with the user's eye boxes despite physical misalignment of optical components.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Manufacturing precision
If optical components are rigidly mounted in the head-mounted support structure, then manufacturing precision and initial alignment are improved, but the device becomes vulnerable to misalignment after stress or drops
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements a dynamic alignment compensation system that continuously monitors optical component positions using sensors (accelerometers, gyroscopes, cameras) and adjusts image rendering in real-time based on detected movements, drops, or stress conditions. This transforms the static rigid mounting into a dynamically adaptive system that maintains alignment despite physical shocks or structural changes.
2Reliability
If alignment monitoring and compensation systems are added, then alignment stability is improved, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs self-diagnosis and self-correction by using onboard sensors to automatically detect alignment deviations caused by drops or stress, then autonomously applies geometric transforms to image data to compensate for the misalignment without requiring external intervention or complex manual calibration procedures.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements continuous feedback loops where sensors monitor the positions of optical components and the system's movement state, this information is fed to control circuitry that calculates appropriate compensation transforms, which are then applied to the image rendering pipeline to maintain proper alignment between displayed images and the user's eye boxes.
Data Source
AI summary
A head-mounted device may have a left display and a right display that provide respective left and right images. Left and right optical combiner systems may be configured to pass real-world light to left and right eye boxes while directing the left and right images respectively to the left and right eye boxes. Misalignment of the left and right images with respect to the left and right eye boxes may be detected using gaze tracking systems, using cameras such as front-facing cameras in conjunction with a database of known real-world object properties, using visual inertial odometry systems formed from cameras and inertial measurement units, or using one or more sensors in a portable head-mounted device case or other item with a receptacle configured to receive a head-mounted device. Compensating adjustments may be made to the images based on the measured misalignment.