{"id":1197,"date":"2022-04-21T10:36:09","date_gmt":"2022-04-21T08:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/salvia.de\/?p=1197"},"modified":"2022-04-21T10:38:33","modified_gmt":"2022-04-21T08:38:33","slug":"laser-beam-scanning-fuels-augmented-realitys-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/salvia.de\/en\/laser-beam-scanning-fuels-augmented-realitys-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Laser beam scanning fuels augmented reality\u2019s future"},"content":{"rendered":"

Consumer technologies benefit as innovations coming from the photonics community find appropriate applications<\/strong>
\nFeb. 1, 2022 – Peter Fretty, LASER FOCUS WORLD
\nAugmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), extended reality (XR), and mixed reality (MR) have rapidly become buzzwords, leading to a lot of experimentation and excitement about future applications. While the technologies are often lumped together, it is important to note the clear distinctions in underlying technologies and use cases. Of the group, AR has the most realistic potential within the near future.
\nAccording to Eric Abbruzzese, research director with ABI Research (New York, NY), AR is best defined as any device with a screen that enables pass-through or glanceable digital content, which includes both mobile devices and smart glasses, and within smart glasses this includes mixed reality devices like Microsoft HoloLens and assisted reality devices like RealWear.
\nWhen considering AR, the enterprise market started stronger with worker enablement and high value use cases like remote assistance, training, and data capture (for example, real-time capture of audio, images, video, machine\/environment data). \u201cThis has been true for both smart glasses and mobile devices, with mobile being the dominant device used for AR thanks to cost and ease of integration compared to glasses,\u201d says Abbruzzese. \u201cThe smart glasses hardware market is getting more competitive, though, so falling prices and generally greater knowledge and comfort around smart glasses (in both consumer and enterprise spaces) will help spur adoption.\u201d<\/p>\n

Laser-driven evolution<\/strong>
\nEvolutions from within the photonics community are surfacing as key components as AR technology moves from trendy prototypes to mass production products. Consider, for instance, the potential when using laser beam scanning (LBS). LBS shows considerable advantages over other technologies (such as LCOS, DLP, LCD, and OLED) with respect to achievable form factor (size), power consumption, weight, brightness, and contrast.
\nAdditionally, LBS only generates light and consumes power where information is needed. And, since earliest generations of AR smart glasses products mainly show icons and messages, LBS far outshines power-hungry spatial light modulator-based systems. As such, LBS is the key to enabling stylish smart glasses for real consumer AR products (see Fig. 1).
\n\u201cLBS beats the \u00b5LED-based approaches in part because \u00b5LED is not capable of demonstrating a mass production-compatible manufacturing process that comes along with a suitably high yield,\u201d says Dr. Ulrich Hofmann, founder and managing director of OQmented (Itzehoe, Germany).
\nOQmented is a deep tech company developing and selling high-performance MEMS mirrors for ultracompact LBS displays and best-in-class 3D sensing solutions for mobile and stationary applications (see Fig. 2). In addition, the \u00b5LED concept seems to be more inefficient and power-hungry, so the smaller the pixels get\u2014which seems to limit achievable resolution.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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FIGURE 2. OQmented’s MEMS mirrors have use in ultracompact LBS displays and 3D sensing solutions for mobile and stationary applications.<\/p><\/div>\n

The expectation is that the first AR smart glasses using LBS will be based on combinations with diffractive waveguides because the \u201cconcept is convincing with respect to large eyebox (the range of how far the eyes can be moved without cropping the image). However, the LBS concept could still be more power-efficient if LBS was to be combined with holographic combiners. Such an approach could help reduce power consumption of the laser sources by more than one order of magnitude,\u201d says Hofmann. \u201cHowever, so far, the eyebox of that approach is much too small, and as such needs to be solved, first. If the eyebox problem of the holographic combiner approach is not solved, there will probably be only waveguide-based AR LBS products.\u201d
\nHofmann tells Laser Focus World there is room for improvements when it comes to integration technologies and packaging. \u201cBesides the well-established and more conventional solutions of combining multi-component RGB laser modules with our MEMS mirrors to build a complete light engine of first product generations of AR smart glasses, we also develop technologies that allow for a higher integration level and improved and more efficient mass production throughput,\u201d he says (see Fig. 3). \u201cTo minimize the system size, we consequently integrate both scanning axes of the MEMS mirror on a single chip in contrast to other approaches where two single-axis scanning mirror chips are being used and need to be accurately aligned.\u201d<\/p>\n

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FIGURE 3. OQmented’s glass forming technology for chip encapsulation on the wafer level.<\/p><\/div>\n

Since power consumption and long operation time plays such an important role, OQmented is operating both scanning axes in resonance\u2014yielding the most power-efficient mode of a mechanical spring mass system while also allowing for largest oscillation amplitudes and optical resolution. \u201cWe also encapsulated the whole MEMS mirror in a miniature vacuum capsule, which effectively reduces damping (friction) losses,\u201d says Hofmann. \u201cThat further increases the achievable oscillation amplitudes and optical resolution, and leads to even lower power consumption. This way, the MEMS mirror and MEMS driver can be designed to consume less than 10 mW.\u201d<\/p>\n

Future is nearing <\/strong>
\nInstead of focusing on the professional AR market, where size and power consumption are irrelevant, OQmented is targeting fashionable consumer AR smart glasses (see video). \u201cThis technology is a key enabler for real AR consumer products, and in the long run it will be the enabler to replace the smartphone by AR smart glasses,\u201d Hofmann says. \u201cFor many years, we have seen bulky, ugly AR\/VR helmets, but besides the gamers and professionals, this technology was not commonly accepted.\u201d
\nHofmann expects widespread acceptance will come when the AR concept allows a comfortable, stylish, all-day-long wearable device, even with initial shortcomings and limitations with respect to resolution and performance. \u201cTrying it the other way around and coming from high-performance criteria and sacrificing form factor, shape, and appearance has definitely failed,\u201d he says. \u201cSome AR\/VR companies that were using and pushing spatial light modulator-based approaches in the past could have already changed towards LBS for certain products.\u201d
\nAccording to ABI Research, the consumer inflection point in consumer smart glasses shipments is closer than some may think\u2014specifically 2023. \u201cAs soon as Apple releases its mass-market AR smart glasses device, the market will take off. Some players will come before\u2014nReal has been a notable early player, and Meta\u2019s real AR device with a display (as opposed to Ray-Ban Stories, which are not visual-capable) is expected in the next year\u2014but Apple has the iOS install base, brand power, and AR\/VR service and content foundation to hit the ground running,\u201d says Abbruzzese.
\nABI Research\u2019s numbers paint a pretty picture for AR, with total smart glasses shipments projected to have a 66% CAGR through 2026 to make up almost 28 million shipments\u2014this is across all verticals, and both consumer and enterprise. Additionally, some consumer verticals are growing most quickly, like media\/entertainment at over 100% CAGR. While gaming still dominates for VR, retail is a promising vertical for early consumer AR activity, and ABI has seen the potential of that with numerous AR retail integrations for virtual try-on, cosmetics, furniture, and more. \u201cApple\u2019s ongoing Shopify integration is another example of them being ready for an AR swell,\u201d says Abbruzzese.<\/p>\n

External forces<\/strong>
\nOutside of the hype (fueled mostly by the Meta\/Facebook rebranding efforts), there\u2019s still so much to materialize around metaverse. \u201cWhat are the high-value use cases short-term, how data handoff between platforms is handled (something absolutely critical to the metaverse and yet not really discussed yet), what hardware and infrastructure is required,\u201d says Abbruzzese. \u201cIt\u2019s still very early for metaverse so there is time for maturation here, but no matter how it plays out, both AR and VR fill a critical role in immersive content consumption.\u201d
\n5G is important to mention as well, not so much as a requirement for AR or VR today, but instead a value-add and a means of broadening capability going forward. \u201cAs standalone HMDs (both AR and VR) make up the majority of their respective markets, there\u2019s great interest in offloading processing where possible to improve battery life and form factor,\u201d says Abbruzzese.
\n\u201cEdge compute and streaming can allow for that, with anything from hybrid local\/cloud to full cloud streaming,\u201d says Abbruzzese. \u201cMost flagship smartphones today support 5G, and so any AR\/VR usage with a smartphone base at least has the connectivity radios needed. Relatedly, most smartphones also support AR at the OS level (Apple ARKit and Google ARCore), and so mobile device AR remains a compelling AR choice for many.\u201d<\/p>\n

Laser Fokus World<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Consumer technologies benefit as innovations coming from the photonics community find appropriate applications Feb. 1, 2022 – Peter Fretty, LASER FOCUS WORLD Augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), extended reality (XR), and mixed reality (MR) have rapidly become buzzwords, leading to a lot of experimentation and excitement about future applications. While the technologies are often […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nLaser beam scanning fuels augmented reality\u2019s future - Salvia GmbH<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/salvia.de\/en\/laser-beam-scanning-fuels-augmented-realitys-future\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Laser beam scanning fuels augmented reality\u2019s future - Salvia GmbH\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Consumer technologies benefit as innovations coming from the photonics community find appropriate applications Feb. 1, 2022 – Peter Fretty, LASER FOCUS WORLD Augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), extended reality (XR), and mixed reality (MR) have rapidly become buzzwords, leading to a lot of experimentation and excitement about future applications. 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