Reduction of Aerial Image Misalignment in Face-to-Face 3D Aerial Display

A Micromirror Array Plate (MMAP) has been proposed as a type of aerial display that allows users to directly touch the floating image. However, the aerial images generated by this optical element have a limited viewing angle, making them difficult to use in face-to-face interactions. Conventional methods enable face-to-face usability by displaying multiple aerial images corresponding to different viewpoints. However, because these images are two-dimensional, they cannot be displayed at the same position due to the inherent characteristics of MMAP. An omnidirectional 3D autostereoscopic aerial display has been developed to address this issue, but it requires multiple expensive and specially shaped MMAPs to generate aerial images. To overcome this limitation, this study proposes a method that combines a single MMAP with integral photography (IP) to produce 3D aerial images with depth while reducing image misalignment. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method successfully displays a 3D aerial image using a single MMAP and reduces image misalignment to 1.1 mm.