High‐resolution aerial 3D display based on lens‐enhanced aerial imaging by retro‐reflection (LeAIRR) and light‐field display

Abstract We present a high‐resolution aerial 3D display that was developed by combining lens‐enhanced aerial imaging by retro‐reflection (LeAIRR) with a light‐field display. The display forms a high‐resolution 3D image that is floating in mid‐air. LeAIRR reduces image degradation caused by the micro‐corner‐cube prisms in the retro‐reflector. The prisms cause ray shift and diffraction, which decrease the resolution. The edges of prisms also cause scattering, which decreases the contrast. LeAIRR reduces diffraction and scattering effects by employing a lens to make the aerial image and the retro‐reflector optically conjugate, after which the retro‐reflected light is focused by a convex lens. Furthermore, the convex lens performs optically reduced imaging of the corner‐cube prisms on the aerial image position. Thus, the ray shifts caused by the prisms are reduced. Our prototype of the aerial 3D display provides the contrast transfer function (CTF) to be 2.5 times better than the conventional aerial 3D display based on the AIRR optical system.