NSF Award
9529779
9529779 Aye This Small Business Innovation Research Phase II project is to develop a new volumetric three-dimensional (VTD) display based on the switchable binary optical element (SBOE) concept. Current direct view volumetric displays have limitations in their performance due to mechanical movement of the display screens, which can be overcome in the proposed VTD display. In this concept, a 2-D array of surface printed binary optical elements (BOEs) are coated with a rapidly switchable Ferro- electric liquid crystal layer. A stack of these arrays form the volume medium of the display. Each BOE, which forms a volume pixel (voxel) element, can be rapidly switched on and off while a 3 color (RGB) low power laser beam is scanned across the display volume. When in an unswitched state, the medium will be transparent. while in a switched state. the scanning laser beam will be diffracted and diffused into a cone shape from the switched voxel elements. In order to produce a 3D image, the scanned laser beam is modulated while scanned over the BOE plane. It is anticipated that this research will result in a real-time flicker-free 3D volume display prototvpe without any moving parts. The proposed VTD system will be extremely valuable for true 3D display technology. Commercial applications of this VTD technology will be in entertainment (ie, video games), medical imaging, CAD/CAM, surveillance photogrammetry, training and simulation, air traffic control, molecular modeling, telerobotics and cockpit or shipboard displays.
