Tailored freeform optical surface
AssigneeMitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc.
InventorsMatthew Brand, Aydan Aksoylar
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An optic has a freeform optical surface transforming incident light emitted by a spatially extended light source into a constellation of images of the spatially extended light source. The images in the constellation are mixed to form a target illumination pattern having a sharp-edge at least along a portion of a boundary. The images include a focused image, and an edge of the focused image participates in forming the sharp-edged boundary the target illumination pattern.
Claims18
An optic having a freeform optical surface transforming incident light emitted by a spatially extended light source into a constellation of images of the spatially extended light source, wherein the images in the constellation are mixed to form a target illumination pattern having a sharp-edge at least along a portion of a boundary, wherein the images include a focused image, and wherein an edge of the focused image participates in forming the sharp-edged boundary the target illumination pattern, wherein the freeform optical surface illuminated by a zero-étendue light source forms a deblurred illumination pattern produced by deblurring the target illumination pattern with a spatially variant blur function, wherein the spatially variant blur function defines a blur of the target illumination pattern resulted from illuminating an initial freeform optical surface with the spatially extended light source, wherein the initial freeform optical surface is determined for transforming incident light emitted by the zero-étendue light source into the target illumination pattern.
The method for fabricating an optic, comprising:
- determining a deblurred illumination pattern by deblurring a target illumination pattern with a spatially variant blur function;
- and
- determining a freeform optical surface transforming incident light emitted by a spatially extended light source into a constellation of images of the spatially extended light source, wherein the freeform optical surface is determined for a zero-étendue light source such that the freeform optical surface illuminated by the zero-étendue light source forms the deblurred illumination pattern, wherein the images are mixed to form a target illumination pattern having a sharp-edge at least along a portion of a boundary, wherein the images include a focused image, and wherein an edge of the focused image participates in forming the sharp-edged boundary the target illumination pattern;
- and
- fabricating the optic having the freeform optical surface.
A non-transitory computer readable storage medium embodied thereon a program executable by a processor for performing a method, the method comprising:
- determining an initial freeform optical surface transforming incident light emitted by a zero-étendue light source into a target illumination pattern;
- determining a spatially variant blur function that captures a blur of the target illumination pattern illuminated by a spatially extended light source;
- deblurring the target illumination with the spatially variant blur function to determine a blurred illumination;
- and
- determining a freeform optical surface transforming incident light emitted by a zero-étendue light source into the target illumination pattern, such that the freeform optical surface transforming incident light emitted by the spatially extended light source into a constellation of images of the extended light source, wherein the images are mixed to form the target illumination pattern having a sharp-edge at least along a portion of a boundary, wherein the images include a focused image, and wherein an edge of the focused image participates in forming the sharp-edged boundary the target illumination pattern.
An optic having a freeform optical surface transforming incident light emitted by a spatially extended light source into a constellation of images of the spatially extended light source, wherein the images in the constellation are mixed to form a target illumination pattern having a sharp-edge at least along a portion of a boundary, wherein the images include a focused image, and wherein an edge of the focused image participates in forming the sharp-edged boundary the target illumination pattern, wherein at least two images in the constellation of images are adjacent to each other to form a first smooth joint image having a first intensity, and wherein at least two images in the constellation of images are at least partially overlay each other to form a second smooth joint image having a second intensity, wherein the images forming the second smooth joint image are smeared and overlaid such that a difference between a first intensity and a second intensity is less than a threshold.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.