Computer graphics processing and selective visual display system – Image superposition by optical means – Operator body-mounted heads-up display
Patent
1996-02-12
1999-11-02
Chow, Dennis-Doon
Computer graphics processing and selective visual display system
Image superposition by optical means
Operator body-mounted heads-up display
340980, G09G 500
Patent
active
059779357
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a head-mounted image display device for displaying images on a screen showing a virtual space and to a data processing apparatus including this device.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The design of electronic circuits or experiment thereon requires materials such as data sheets due to the need to confirm the specifications of parts to be used. In this case, the materials are scattered on and around the designer's desk, thereby limiting the working space or hindering the designer from finding required materials quickly. This reduces the working efficiency.
To carry out design efficiently, computer aided engineering (CAE) for working out designs using computers has been introduced. That is, a paperless design environment has been established in which, for example, materials such as data sheets are registered in a computer to enable them to be displayed and referenced on the screen of the display as required. The above inconveniences have thus partly been eliminated.
If, however, a large number of parts are to be used and a large number of materials must be referenced at the same time, although several windows can be opened on the screen to display different materials in the different windows, the windows must sometimes overlap each other if a large number of windows must be used simultaneously due to the physically limited size and resolution of the CRT display for displaying information. As a result, the amount of information that can be referenced at the same time is limited, and the efficiency provided by the introduction of CAE is thus limited; in some cases, it is faster to find required materials among those scattered on and around the table as described above.
The working efficiency is also reduced in the maintenance or repair of an installed apparatus, wherein the operator must carry out such an operation while referencing instruction manuals and wherein because the surroundings are in disorder, the operator cannot place the manuals in positions in which they can be referenced appropriately. Under such conditions, however, it is further difficult to place a CRT display close to the operator, and the introduction of CAE is impossible. Thus, no other appropriate solutions were available.
Several methods of mounting a display apparatus on the operator's head and displaying information from materials thereon have thus been proposed.
Published Unexamined Patent Application No. 5-100192 describes a method of displaying screens from electronics such as word processors on a spectacle-like display, but this is only a spectacle-shaped variation of conventional displays and is not suited to the presentation of a large number of materials. Published Unexamined Patent Application No. 4-263283 proposes a portable virtual reality apparatus, but this simply provides an artificial reality apparatus and is not suited to the manipulation of displayed data.
In addition, for conventional head-mounted image display devices, several problems arising from the need to alternatively view a virtual image on the liquid crystal display and the corresponding image on the external keyboard due to the large difference in image quality between these images, have been pointed out. To solve this problem, some conventional techniques cause a display image and the corresponding external image to overlap each other.
Head-mounted image display devices of this type, however, also have problems. For example, in such apparatuses, the visibility is very bad because external images are simply caused to overlap the corresponding display images, and alternatively viewing different images may strain the operator's eyes.
In addition, in head-mounted image display devices, when, for example, data is input to a word processor, keys to be pressed must be confirmed while viewing a display image, so the external keyboard must be checked while watching the display image.
To solve this problem, a means for switching between an external image and the corresponding imag
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Kamakura Hiroshi
Karasawa Joji
Kinebuchi Tadashi
Uchiyama Syoichi
Watanabe Noriko
Chow Dennis-Doon
Seiko Epson Corporation
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