Wearable Waveguide Visual Auras for Out-of-View Awareness
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing VR, AR, and MR technologies struggle to provide a comfortable and natural-feeling presentation of virtual image elements within the user's field of view, often causing eye strain and discomfort due to mismatched accommodation and vergence cues.
Innovation Solution
A wearable system that includes a display system with a waveguide assembly to simulate multiple depth planes, using sensors and a hardware processor to identify objects outside the user's field of view and render a visual aura on the edge of the field of view, providing contextual information through visual, audio, or tactile cues.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If virtual image elements are presented within the user's field of view, then the user can perceive the virtual content, but eye strain and discomfort occur due to mismatched accommodation and vergence cues
Solution Approach 1:
The visual field is segmented into multiple depth planes, with different virtual image elements presented at different focal distances. This allows the system to provide both near and far accommodation cues simultaneously, resolving the conflict between presenting virtual content within the field of view and avoiding eye strain from mismatched accommodation-vergence cues.
Solution Approach 2:
The system adds a depth dimension to the presentation of virtual image elements by rendering them at multiple focal distances along the optical axis. This dimensional addition allows the accommodation system to focus at appropriate distances while maintaining vergence alignment, thereby eliminating the harmful accommodation-vergence conflict that causes eye strain.
2Measurement precision
If the field of view is limited to what the user can perceive at a given time, then the display system maintains focus and clarity, but objects outside the field of view are not detected
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary detection and identification of objects located outside the current field of view using sensors and processors. This preliminary action allows the system to prepare contextual information about these objects and present it through auras at the boundaries of the visible field, so users are informed of their presence before the objects enter the direct field of view.
Solution Approach 2:
Visual auras serve as intermediary elements that convey information about objects outside the field of view. These auras are rendered at the boundaries of the visible field and provide contextual cues about the presence, type, and relevance of objects that are not yet directly visible, thereby compensating for the limited instantaneous field of view without sacrificing the clarity of perceived objects.
3Loss of information
If visual auras are rendered at the edge of the field of view to indicate objects outside the view, then spatial awareness is improved, but the display complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
Visual auras are rendered selectively at specific locations at the boundaries of the field of view, rather than uniformly across the entire display. The system determines which objects outside the field of view are relevant and renders auras only at the corresponding edge locations, thereby improving spatial awareness without unnecessarily increasing display complexity across the entire system.
Data Source
AI summary
A wearable device can have a field of view through which a user can perceive real or virtual objects. The device can display a visual aura representing contextual information associated with an object that is outside the user's field of view. The visual aura can be displayed near an edge of the field of view and can dynamically change as the contextual information associated with the object changes, e.g., the relative position of the object and the user (or the user's field of view) changes.