Could a pair of glasses be the next big computing platform?

Marco Angelici, MEMS Micro Actuators Business Unit director at STMicroelectronics, thinks the 2020s will be the decade when augmented-reality glasses replace smartphones.?The key technology enabler for the transition will be laser-beam scanning (LBS), according to Angelici and ST.

At the end of 2020, 5.27 billion people — 67% of the global population — subscribed to mobile services, according to the GSM Association. There will be nearly half a billion new subscribers by 2025, taking the total number of subscribers to 5.7 billion, or 70% of the world’s people. Providing all those customers with anytime, anywhere access to information is essential, but the smartphone user experience has its limitations.

“We see a decline in phone innovation,” said Angelici. “We are at the dawn of another revolution in the mobile user interface,” characterized by the shift from mobile phones to smart glasses. “Instead of watching your phone while you are walking, moving your head up and down, you would be able to watch the world around you, interact with people, get your information directly at eye level.”

Perceiving an inflection point, Angelici said, “Augmented reality can be the next computing platform, and in the long term, it can replace mobile phones.”

The first AR smart glasses were a bold attempt to bring people more seamlessly into the information age. The Google Glass concept was brilliant, but the execution was lacking. Priced at $1,500, the strange-looking glasses didn’t deliver the experience or the value that users expected.

Lessons were learned from those missteps, Angelici said. All-day wearable smart glasses must be comfortable and fashionable, support the user’s prescription lenses on the glasses, deliver critical application-specific information, and be reasonably priced.

ST is convinced that LBS will be a key enabling technology for small-form–factor AR smart glasses that can check all of those boxes. Toward that end, the company has built an ecosystem of technology developers, suppliers, and manufacturers to develop a communication device tailored to today’s customers’ needs.

Building an ecosystem

A deciding factor for any alliance is the complementary expertise of its members. In October 2020, ST, Applied Materials, Dispelix, Mega1, and Osram established the LaSAR (Laser Scanning for Augmented Reality) Alliance to create an ecosystem that will enable and accelerate the design and manufacture of AR wearable devices such as smart glasses and head-mounted displays.

“Today, we are working together, learning from each other, finding tradeoffs in order to find the best specification for the full system,” said Angelici. “The ultimate scope is standardization.”

The alliance brings together a MEMS micromirror platform from ST, compact illumination sources from Osram, and waveguide elements from Dispelix and Applied Materials. Mega1 is responsible for integrating those devices into a small optical light engine.

After IEEE Industry Standards and Technology Organization (ISTO) announced the formation of the LaSAR Alliance in March, it received membership requests from 10 to 15 additional companies, said Angelici.

The alliance’s first milestone is to develop a lightweight, compact, all-day wearable and fashionable pair of glasses for mass production in 2022. Expectations are high, as partners target weight lower than 60 g, power consumption under 500 mW, and brightness beyond 1,000 nits. There is, however, a debate over the field of view, acknowledged Angelici. “We believe that a 30° field of view is more than enough for all-day wearable glasses. We don’t need to cover the sides, as we won’t be playing games with these wearable glasses. We are talking about receiving messages, infographics, into our eyes.”

With LBS, he claimed, it is possible to achieve up to a 100° field of view, but there is always a tradeoff: “The more I open, the more power it consumes.”

ST and Quanta Computer are developing the optical, electronic, and photonics design to enable volume manufacturing of AR smart glasses in line with the LaSAR Alliance. “They [Quanta] have put a lot of effort in R&D, and they will have a full pair of glasses based on our laser-beam scanning technology, embedding the application processor, the connectivity, the sensors, the glasses, and the lenses,” said Angelici.

Optimizing MEMS micromirrors

ST has extensive experience in MEMS design, development, and manufacturing, with competencies in electrostatic, electromagnetic, and piezoelectric technologies. The group started investing in MEMS micromirrors in 2009 and boosted its activities by acquiring bTendo, an Israeli startup specializing in LBS solutions, in 2012. Since then, it has sealed partnerships with Intel, MicroVision, LeddarTech, and North (now Google).

MEMS micromirrors are used in LBS systems to project visible images or infrared patterns. They work by deflecting laser beams emitted from laser diodes to project images onto the required field of view. The beam deflection is generally performed using a combination of two mirrors rotating on perpendicular axes.

By: DocMemory
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