Retinal projection device and method for activating a display of a retinal projection device

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-2016378180-A1
Application number	US-201514753984-A
Country	US
Kind code	A1
Filing date	Jun 29, 2015
Priority date	Jun 29, 2015
Publication date	Dec 29, 2016
Grant date	—

Abstract

The present disclosure is directed to retinal display projection device comprising a projection component arranged for projecting an image directly onto the retina of a user wearing the device. The projection device further comprises an eye gaze detection module arranged to take an eye image of a user's eyes and to activate the projection component if a pupil of the user is in a predetermined position in said eye image.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1 . A retinal display projection device comprising:
a projection component arranged for projecting an image directly onto the retina of a user wearing the device; an eye gaze detection module arranged to
obtain and analyze a plurality of eye images of at least one of a user's eyes and
to activate the projection component if the image analysis shows that a pupil of the user is in a predetermined position in said eye image.

2 . The retinal display projection device according to claim 1 , wherein the eye gaze detection module comprises an image sensor and a plurality of lens.

3 . The device of claim 1 wherein the projection component comprises a laser.

4 . The device of claim 1 further comprising non-transitory computer readable code, embodied in computer readable media, for controlling the projection component so that a first projected image is only provided when the pupil of the user is in the predetermined position, and the projection component is deactivated when the pupil of the user returns to a normal gaze position.

5 . The device of claim 1 wherein the predetermined position is offset by at least 15 degrees from a normal position of the pupil in the eye image.

6 . The device of claim 5 wherein the eye gaze detection module includes a processor for determining a normal position of the pupil of the user, and recalibrating the normal position over time.

7 . The device of claim 1 further comprising:
a battery for providing power to the projection component and the eye gaze detection module;
a power management circuit connected to the battery and the projection module;
a processor in the eye gaze detection module configured to direct the power management circuit to remove power to the projection module when the pupil of the user is not in the predetermined position.

8 . A method for activating a projection component of a retinal display projection device, comprising the steps of:
acquiring an eye image having a plurality of pixels; detecting, within said eye image, a plurality of the eye's anatomical landmarks; determining if said plurality of anatomical landmarks correspond to an eye with a pupil placed in a predetermined position; and activating the projection component if the pupil is placed in said predetermined position.

9 . The method according to claim 8 , wherein said predetermined position is in a predefined region of a reference system (x, y) of the eye, wherein the reference system (x,y) has an x-axis passing through the center of a Caruncle of the eye and a lateral canthus and a y-axis perpendicular to the x-axis and crossing it at the middle point of a line segment connecting the center of the Caruncle and the lateral canthus.

10 . The method according to claim 8 , further comprising, after the acquisition of the eye image, the step of determining a histogram distribution of intensity values of the eye image pixels and normalizing the histogram distribution.

11 . The method according to claim 10 , wherein the step of normalizing comprises the steps of representing the lightest sections of the eye image by pixel values near to a maximum value and the darkest sections of the eye image by pixel values near to zero.

12 . The method according to claim 8 , wherein the step of detecting a plurality of eye's anatomical landmarks comprises the steps of:
detecting connected regions of the eye image; converting the eye image to a binary mask by assigning to each pixel of the image a predefined value based on the intensity value of said pixel; and finding all connected regions whose pixels have the same predefined value.

13 . The method according to claim 12 , further comprising the step of applying morphological transformations to the connected regions to remove noise or very small features.

14 . The method according to claims 13 , wherein the connected regions whose pixels have the same predefined value are classified using a classifier to detect if each one of them corresponds to an anatomical landmarks of the eye.

15 . A method for activating a projection component of a retinal display projection device, comprising the steps of:
a) acquiring an eye image; b) determining pixel values for the eye image; c) performing a component analysis of said eye image; d) applying a gaze classifier to the components to detect if the eye image shows an eye with the pupil placed in a predetermined position; and e) activating the projection component if the pupil is detected in said predetermined position.

16 . The method according to claim 15 , wherein the component analysis of step c) is principal component analysis and further includes decomposing the pixel values of the eye image into a set of principal components.

17 . The method according to claim 15 , wherein the component analysis of step c) is a zero phase component analysis of said eye image.

18 . The method according to claim 15 wherein the gaze classifier is based on random forests (RF).

19 . The method according to claim 15 wherein the gaze classifier is a neural network.

20 . The method according to claim 15 wherein the gaze classifier is a support vector machine.

21 . The method according to claim 8 or 15 , wherein the retinal display projection device includes an ambient light sensor, and further comprising the steps of adapting the brightness of a projected image; and
wherein activating the projection component comprises the step of adapting the light intensity of the projected image according to the following equation:
I lightsource =I user *I pixel *a* ln( I ALS )+ B

where
I lightsource is the drive current of a light source ( 20 ) of the projection component ( 2 )
I user is a predefined scaling factor;
I pixel is the pixel intensity characterizing the image to be displayed;
ln(I ALS ) is a predefined scaling factor dependent emission current (I ALS ) of the ambient light sensor ( 32 );
a and B are predefined values.

Assignees

• Logitech Europe Sa

Inventors

• Theytaz Olivier
• Constantin Christophe
• Salarian Arash
• Vlassov Maxime
• Bonanno Daniel

Classifications

• G06F18/2135

  based on approximation criteria, e.g. principal component analysis · CPC title

• G06V10/507

  Summing image-intensity values; Histogram projection analysis · CPC title

• G06V10/46

  Descriptors for shape, contour or point-related descriptors, e.g. scale invariant feature transform [SIFT] or bags of words [BoW]; Salient regional features (colour feature extraction G06V10/56) · CPC title

• G06K9/00617

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06F3/012

  Head tracking input arrangements · CPC title