This Small Business Research Program (SBIR) Phase I project will develop an ultra-fast, compact (2 cm x 2 cm x 2 cm) and random-addressable laser scanner for automotive windshield display system. The company has recently built, for the first time, a prototype of automobile full-windshield display system. The system is capable to display critical information, from input of GPS navigation system, night-vision camera and other automobile sensors, anywhere on the entire windshield. To push the technology to be implemented in automobiles, however, the performance, size, reliability and cost of the display engine have to be substantially enhanced. Based on parallel scanning of multiple laser beams, the innovative scanner architecture uses two MEMS micro-mirror array: one is a 2-axis micro-mirror array chip; another is a deformable micro-mirror array chip. The total bandwidth of the scanner module is scaleable with the total number of micro-mirrors in the array. Furthermore, each of micro-mirror can be independently scanned. The divergence angle of the each laser beam can also be independently varied. By integration with a laser diode array and micro-lens array, the package becomes a miniature laser display engine - a critical component for our advanced full-windshield information display system.
If successful the display-on-glass technology, enabled by the proposed MEMS laser scanner, will revolutionize the automobile display industry and fundamentally change the future looks and function of the automobile windshields. Given the ~20 Million of automobiles sold in US annually and ~120 Million world wide, the technology has the potential of reaching a mega Billion dollar market in the future. In addition, the same technological platform can be retrofitted to the aviation in industry for windshield displays. The miniature display engine can be used for cockpit display and LIDAR system. Many of these systems use currently bulky galvanometer scanner. The new multi-beam scanner can potentially replace those galvanometers due to its superior performance, compact size and robust operation in harsh environment. The transparent display enabled by the miniature display engine may even penetrate retail and consumer market place to turn the glass window of choice to an interactive and dynamic message portal, without blocking the view through the glass.
