Near-to-eye displays with embedded eye-tracking by bi-directional OLED microdisplay

Abstract

Near-to-eye (NTE) projection is the major approach to "Smart Glasses", which have gained lot of traction during the last few years. Micro-displays based on organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) achieve high optical performance with excellent contrast ratio and large dynamic range at low power consumption, making them suitable for such application. In state-of-the-art applications the micro-display typically acts as a purely unidirectional output device. With the integration of an additional image sensor, the functionality of the micro-display can be extended to a bidirectional optical input/output device, aiming for implementation of eye-tracking capabilities in see-through (ST-)NTE applications to achieve gaze-based human-display-interaction. This paper describes a new bi-directional OLED microdisplay featuring SVGA resolution for both image display and acquisition, and its implementation with see-through NTE optics.