PAPILLON: designing curved display surfaces with printed optics

We present a technology for designing curved display surfaces that can both display information and sense two dimensions of human touch. It is based on 3D printed optics, where the surface of the display is constructed as a bundle of printed light pipes, that direct images from an arbitrary planar image source to the surface of the display. This effectively decouples the display surface and image source, allowing to iterate the design of displays without requiring changes to the complex electronics and optics of the device. In addition, the same optical elements also direct light from the surface of the display back to the image sensor allowing for touch input and proximity detection of a hand relative to the display surface. The resulting technology is effective in designing compact, efficient displays of a small size; this has been applied in the design of interactive animated eyes.