Slewable projection system with fiber-optic elements

Abstract

A slewable projection system of the type having a relatively high-resolution area-of-interest (AOI) scenic portion inset into and blended with a relatively low-resolution field-of-view (FOV) scenic portion of greater areal extent than the high-resolution portion, includes: at least one optical element for providing the low-resolution background image portion; at least one other optical element for providing the high-resolution AOI image portion; an optical combiner receiving the low-resolution and high-resolution image portions; optics for projecting the combined image onto a viewing area; and at least one fiber-optic cable having a multiplicity of fibers for interconnecting the combining element and at least one of the two image optics portions and the projecting optics. A fiber-optic element can mechanically decouple the combining and projecting elements, so that high projection slew rates and accelerations can be realized, while also eliminating hard optics associated with image de-rotation and/or focusing. Another fiber-optic element can provide moveable area-of-interest blending at any selected location over the entire area of the background scene, without movement of a projector or other high-pass subassembly. Use of yet another fiber-optic element can facilitate dynamic image merging.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.