Augmented-reality display system using liquid-crystalline microlens array for three-dimensional/two-dimensional image conversion

This report proposes a three-dimensional/two-dimensional switchable augmented-reality display system using a liquidcrystalline lens array and an electrical polarizer. A depth camera that is connected to the proposed augmented-reality display system acquires the three-dimensional or two-dimensional information of the real objects. Here, the dualfunction liquid-crystalline lens array is switched its function according to the polarizing directions of an electrical polarizer. The proposed system's overall procedure is as follows: the depth camera captures the depth/color, or only color image according to the switcher of a polarizer, and the three-dimensional or two-dimensional images are displayed separately on the augmented-reality display system. It gives an opportunity that three-dimensional and two-dimensional modes can be switched automatically. In the two-dimensional mode, the captured color image of a real object is displayed directly. In the three-dimensional mode, the elemental image array is generated from the depth and color images and reconstructed as a three-dimensional image by the liquid-crystalline microlens array of a proposed augmented-reality display system. Even the proposed system cannot be implemented the real-time display in the threedimensional mode, the direction-inversed computation method generates the elemental image arrays of the real object within a possible short time.