Headlight: egocentric visual augmentation by wearable wide projector

Abstract

Visual augmentation to the real environment has potential not only to display information but also to provide a new perception of the physical world. However, the currently available mixed reality technologies could not provide enough angle of view. Thus, we introduce "Headlight", a wearable projector system that provides wide egocentric visual augmentation. Our system consists of a small laser projector with a fish-eye wider conversion lens, a headphone and a pose tracker. HeadLight provides projection angle with approx. 105 deg. horizontal and 55 deg. vertical from the point of view of the user. In this system, the three-dimensional virtual space that is consistent with the physical environment is rendered with a virtual camera based on tracking information of the device. By processing inverse correction of the lens distortion and projecting the rendered image from the projector, HeadLight performs consistent visual augmentation in the real world. With Headlight, we envision that physical phenomena that human could not perceive will be perceived through visual augmentation.