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US 4,859,031 AGranted
Optical collimating apparatus
AssigneeKaiser Electronics
InventorsArthur L. Berman, James E. Melzer
Life of this patent
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AssigneeKaiser Electronics
InventorsArthur L. Berman, James E. Melzer
Estimating the term…
An optical collimating apparatus employs a semi-reflective concave mirror and cholesteric liquid crystal element. In one embodiment, the optical collimating apparatus is used as a heads-up display device. Images in the line of sight of an observer substantially pass through a transmitter/combiner, semi-reflective concave mirror, and cholesteric liquid crystal element to an observer. Images generated by an image source are focussed on the transmitter/combiner such that the transmitter/combiner reflects the images into the line of sight of the observer. The generated images are transmitted by the primarily transmissive (convex) side of the semi-reflective concave mirror to the cholesteric liquid crystal element. The cholesteric liquid crystal element reflects the generated images back toward the primarily reflective (concave) side of the semi-refective concave mirror, which in turn reflects the images back toward the cholesteric liquid crystal element, which transmits the generated images to the observer. In an alternative embodiment, such as in a flight simulator or similar device, an image source projects images upon the primarily transmissive (convex) side of a semi-reflective concave mirror which transmits the images to a cholesteric liquid crystal element. The images are reflected by the cholesteric liquid crystal element back toward the primarily reflective (concave) side of the semi-reflective concave mirror. The images are then reflected by the semi-reflective concave mirror back toward the cholesteric liquid crystal element which transmits the images to the observer.
An optical collimating apparatus for focussing an image at or closer than at an infinite distance from an observer, comprising the elements of:
An optical collimating apparatus for focussing an image at or closer than at an infinite distance from an observer, wherein the image is substantially transmitted by a semi-reflective concave mirror and a first portion of said transmitted image is further transmitted unreflected to the observer by a cholesteric liquid crystal element and a second portion of said transmitted image is reflected by the cholesteric liquid crystal element to the concave mirror, which reflects the second portion of the transmitted image back to the cholesteric liquid crystal element, which transmits the second portion of the transmitted image to the observer, comprising the elements of:
An optical collimating apparatus for focussing an image at or closer than at an infinite distance from an observer, and further for combining the focussed image with an image external to the optical collimating apparatus, comprising the elements of:
An optical collimating apparatus for focussing an image at or closer than at an infinite distance from an observer, and further for combining the focussed image with an image external to the optical collimating apparatus, wherein projected images from an image source are reflected by a transmitter/combiner acting as a combiner to combine the projected images with the images in the line of sight of the observer and further wherein the projected images are reflected by a cholesteric liquid crystal element to the semi-reflective concave mirror, which reflects the images back to the cholesteric liquid crystal element, which substantially transmits the images to the observer, and further wherein external images are substantially transmitted by the semi-reflective concave mirror and further substantially transmitted to the observer by the cholesteric liquid crystal element, comprising the elements of:
A method for optically collimating an image at or closer than at an infinite distance from an observer, comprising the steps of:
A method for optically collimating an image at or closer than at an infinite distance from an observer, and further for positioning said image in a line of sight plane of an observer, comprising the steps of:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.