AI-assisted AR glasses

Artificial intelligence (AI) makes augmented reality (AR) eyeglasses smarter and more powerful in communications, image resolution, color temperature, ambient contrast ratio, and eye-tracking for foveated imaging, just to name a few. To facilitate all-day comfortable wearing, AR glasses must have a compact formfactor and lightweight, while keeping a sufficiently high ambient contrast ratio especially under outdoor diffusive sunlight conditions, and low power consumption to sustain a long battery operation life. These demanding requirements pose significant challenges for present AR light engines due to the relatively low efficiency of the waveguide combiners. In this seminar, we will focus on analyzing the power consumption of five commonly employed microdisplay light engines for AR glasses, including micro-LEDs, OLEDs, liquid-crystal-on-silicon, laser beam scanning, and digital light processing. Their perspectives and challenges are also discussed. Finally, adding a zoned smart dimmer in front of the AR glasses greatly improves the ambient contrast ratio and reduces the power consumption.