Tiny waveguides

Today, the size of an AR/VR/MR device means everything. One of the major barriers to adoption of AR/VR/MR headsets is their weight and their bulk. Many of the components make headsets bulky and heavy, including the optical elements, the display and the waveguide. What if we could reduce their sizes? TRIOPTICS focuses their expertise on achieving quality performance in that endeavor, having honed its knowledge by working on smartphone optics over the past decade, where the reduction in size of optical elements – without compromising on performance – means everything in the dog-eat-dog world of smartphone imaging capabilities.

Additionally, the smaller and more lightweight the optical technology, the more immersive is the AR/VR/MR experience, and here the waveguide has a very important role to play to collapse the design of the device. The ultimate goal is to have a headset as unobtrusive as a pair of glasses – unobtrusive for the wearer as well as for the people around them. You might remember the negative reactions that people felt towards the wearers of the first Google Glass. AR/VR/MR devices probably have to blend in, otherwise the wearer could become the object of derision. On the more practical matter of the immersive experience, lightweight and unobtrusive components play a massive role in the wearability and useability of the device.

Since the waveguide is preferably small and has such a big influence on optical quality, it must be accurate in its performance to single-nanometer wavelength resolution. To meet these stringent form and size requirements, nanoengineering is currently being used to build the structures of such waveguides.

The secret to building the perfect waveguide is in the engineering, and optimization through iterative refinement. When prototype design can be rapidly created, built, tested, and then redesigned, the cycle of optimization turns much faster. This has a major impact on whose product is on the market first. Everybody remembers who built the first Sony Walkman, the first Palm Pilot, the first Apple iPhone. Nobody remembers who came second.

From Lab to Fab

TRIOPTICS have developed an array of tools to rapidly measure optical performance on component level from wafer to waveguide to module, thereby allowing faster product development iterations. By also supplying the testing equipment for mass production, measuring properties at the physical limit of diffraction, the product is ready for prime time. TRIOPTICS improves optical performance as well as monitors drift in production. And for waveguides working at the limit of diffraction, this is the difference between success and failure.

TRIOPTICS measurement systems measure below the limit of human visible detection; discrepancies are well below the sensing threshold of human vision. As a result, wearers would not experience any of the typical sensations of nausea associated with AR/VR/MR – the very same symptom that you might feel when you borrow eyeglasses from another person. TRIOPTICS systems can discriminate 60-line pairs/degree. 60 arcseconds is the tilt resolution limit of human vision; below that, human vision is unable to discriminate the deviations.

Customers around the world have selected TRIOPTICS as their partner for guaranteeing the optical quality and performance of their AR/VR/MR product. In the next article, we interview the CTO of Cellid, the Japanese waveguide manufacturer that aims to be the best in the world. Through their partnership with TRIOPTICS, Cellid are already taking the lead in creating and optimizing the most innovative designs for AR/VR/MR.

Talk to TRIOPTICS today to see what a difference we can make to the development of your AR/VR/MR device.