Augmented reality monocular head-up display for depth free image

Head-up displays (HUD) superimpose a display image on a real background. A user observes a see-through imaginary image throughout a partially reflective combiner. An advantage of HUD is that the user glances at the display with minimum movement of gaze point. They have been applied for automotive since 1990s [Okabayashi et al. 1996]. In recent years, an amount of applied model is increasing. In Toshiba Corp., Windshield-reflected Augmented Reality Projector (WARP) with a projection light limited-diffusion angle has been developed to realize the imaginary image at monocular vision, as shown in Figure1 [Okumura et al.2009][Sasaki et al. 2010]. With this WARP system, the display image can be set to any depth position because of no binocular parallax. On the other hand, it is set to a fixed depth with a binocular vision system because of the binocular parallax. We will demonstrate the prototype WARP system and show the effect of depth free image with the monocular vision system.