An emerging alternative to conventional Augmented Reality (AR) glasses designs, Beaming displays promise slim AR glasses free from challenging design trade-offs, including battery-related limits or computational budget-related issues. These beaming displays remove active components such as batteries and electronics from AR glasses and move them to a projector that projects images to a user from a distance (1-2 meters), where users wear only passive optical eyepieces. However, earlier implementations of these displays delivered poor resolutions (7 cycles per degree) without any optical focus cues and were introduced with a bulky form-factor eyepiece (50 mm thick). This paper introduces a new milestone for beaming displays, which we call HoloBeam. In this new design, a custom holographic projector populates a micro-volume located at some distance (1-2 meters) with multiple planes of images. Users view magnified copies of these images from this small volume with the help of an eyepiece that is either a Holographic Optical Element (HOE) or a set of lenses. Our HoloBeam prototypes demonstrate the thinnest AR glasses to date with a submillimeter thickness (e.g., HOE film is only 120 um thick). In addition, HoloBeam prototypes demonstrate near retinal resolutions (24 cycles per degree) with a 70 degrees-wide field of view.

翻译：传统增强现实眼镜设计的一种新兴替代方案——光束投射显示器，有望实现轻薄AR眼镜，从而避免电池续航限制或计算开销等设计权衡难题。这类光束投射显示器将电池和电子元件等有源组件从AR眼镜中移除，并将其转移至投影仪中，该投影仪可在1-2米距离外将图像投射给用户，用户仅需佩戴无源光学目镜。然而，该显示器的早期实现方案分辨率较低（每度7周期），且缺乏光学聚焦线索，同时配备了大体积目镜（厚度50毫米）。本文提出光束投射显示器的里程碑式新设计——HoloBeam。在该新设计中，定制全息投影仪在距离用户1-2米处填充一个微型体积，该体积内包含多个图像平面。用户通过全息光学元件或透镜组构成的目镜，从该微小体积中观察这些图像的放大副本。我们的HoloBeam原型展示了迄今最薄的AR眼镜，厚度低于1毫米（例如全息光学元件薄膜厚度仅为120微米）。此外，HoloBeam原型实现了接近视网膜级分辨率（每度24周期）和70度宽视场角。