2D Pupil Expansion in Plastic Curved Holographic Waveguide Combiner for AR/HUD

Abstract

Waveguide combiners for head up display (HUD) and augmented reality (AR) have the unique advantage to decouple the field of view from the eye box size thanks to pupil replication. However, in order for the image to propagate without aberration in the waveguide, its surfaces have been kept flat and parallel. Here we are presenting a curved waveguide with 2D pupil replication that takes advantage of holographic optical elements for light injection, redirection, and extraction. These HOEs have been designed to compensate for any propagation aberration, so that the extracted image is clear to the viewer. Both ray tracing model and early experimental demonstrator are discussed.