Designers at the U.S. Air Force Armstrong Laboratory in San Antonio, Texas, are trying to spur development of a full-color, high-definition head-mounted display for pilot training.
As the basis for development, they are choosing the Virtual Retinal Display system - better known as VRD - from Microvision Inc. in Seattle. The first phase of development at Armstrong seeks to demonstrate the feasibility of a light-weight head-mounted display capable of presenting a sharp color display for military aircraft simulators and other training uses.
Armstrong officials are awarding Microvision a Small Business Innovation Research contract for early phases of this project. "This contract will allow us to demonstrate how VRD technology can rapidly achieve very high definition imagery not previously possible," says Andrew Lee, Microvision`s vice president of sales and marketing.
VRD technology projects electronically generated images and imformation directly onto the retina of the viewer`s eye. It uses a low-power beam of light to "paint" rows of pixels directly onto the eye to create a high-resolution full-motion image with using screens or externally projected images. - J.K.
For more on the Virtual Retinal Display, contact Todd McIntyre of Microvision by phone at 206-623-7055, ext. 17, by fax at 206-623-7331, by e-mail at [email protected], by mail at 2203 Airport Way South, Suite 100, Seattle, Wash., 98134, or on the World Wide Web at http://www.mvis.com/ technology.html.
