Head mounted projection display (HMPD) technology, as an alternative to conventional head mounted displays (HMD), offers a potential of designing wide field-of-view (FOV), low distortion optical see-through HMDs (OST-HMDs). Existing HMPD designs, however, suffer from problems of low luminance and low image resolution, which limits the applications of such information displays for the scenarios which require high luminance and high image fidelity. The design of a polarized head mounted projection display (p-HMPD) was recently proposed to overcome the challenge of low luminous efficiency in existing HMPD designs. Polarization management was employed to reduce the light loss caused by beamsplitting in an HMPD.The work in this dissertation focuses on the development and evaluation of an SXGA resolution, high efficiency p-HMPD system. The main contributions are as follows. First, the key elements in the polarization management scheme of a p-HMPD were selected and their polarization performances were characterized by measuring their Mueller matrices, based on which the overall display performance of a p-HMPD was analyzed.Second, based on a pair of ferroelectric liquid-crystal-on-silicon (FLCoS) microdisplays, a compact illumination unit and a light-weight projection system were designed, from which a p-HMPD prototype was built. Following the prototype implementation, a series of calibrations were performed to obtain correct color presentation, desired focusing setting, and optical system characteristics necessary for achieving accurate registration between virtual objects and their counterparts in the real world.Third, the imaging properties of a retroreflective screen which is an essential part of a p-HMPD or HMPD were studied and its effects on the image resolution of an HMPD system were further characterized.Finally, the performance of the system was evaluated through two objective user experiments, including a visual acuity assessment and a depth perception accuracy assessment.
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