Design Of A Compact Optical See-Through Head-Worn Display With Mutual Occlusion Capability

We present the first-order design details and preliminary lens design and performance analysis of a compact optical system that can achieve mutual occlusions. Mutual occlusion is the ability of real objects to occlude virtual objects and virtual objects to occlude real objects. Mutual occlusion is a desirable attribute for a certain class of augmented reality applications where as it can provide a critical cue to depth. Compactness is achieved through the use of polarization optics, First order layout of the system is similar to that of a Keplerian telescope operating at finite conjugates. Additionally, we require the image to lie on the plane of the object with unit magnification. An implementation of the system is designed where the same lens is used as the objective and the eyepiece. The system is capable of having very close to zero distortion