Design and demonstration of a vari-focal optical see-through head-mounted display using freeform Alvarez lenses

Alvarez lenses offer accurate and high-speed, dynamic tuning of optical power through a lateral shifting of two lens elements, making them an appealing solution to eliminate the inherent decoupling of accommodation and convergence seen in conventional stereoscopic displays. In this paper, we present a design of a compact eyepiece coupled with two lateral-shifting freeform Alvarez lenses to enable a compact, high-resolution, optical see-through head-mounted display (HMD). The proposed design is able to tune its focal depth from 0 to 3 diopters, rendering near-accurate focus cues with high image quality and a large undistorted see-through field of view (FOV). Our design utilizes an 1920x1080 color resolution organic light-emitting diode (OLED) microdisplay to achieve a >30 degree virtual diagonal FOV, with an angular resolution of <0.85 arcminutes and an average optical performance of > 0.4 contrast over the full field. We also experimentally demonstrate a fully functional benchtop prototype using mostly off-the-shelf optics.