SAN MATEO, Calif., Oct. 12, 2023 - Optica (formerly OSA), Advancing Optics and Photonics Worldwide, is pleased to announce that Brelyon, the MIT spin-off pioneering a new category of ultra-immersive display technologies, has received the 2023 Paul F. Forman Team Engineering Excellence Award. The team is recognized for "introducing the world's first headset-free virtual monitor using computational optics to program the wavefront of the light in large scale."
For decades, researchers in academia and industry have been trying to bring monocular depth to displays via holography, dense lenslet arrays, and diffractive elements. Unfortunately, those techniques significantly degrade image quality and are not able to program the wavefront of the light with the required precision. Wavefront shaping has been done in astronomy and scientific imaging, but those methods are not viable for the commercial display industry. Wavefront engineering gets even harder in large aperture (32") sizes as the wave of light responds to micron-level impurities in optical surfaces.
Building upon revolutionary work from the MIT Media Lab, the Breylon team has developed technological advances in computational wavefront engineering — combining techniques from time-folded optics, and the human vision science — that successfully emulates a massive panoramic screen with single or multiple depth levels without the need for wearing headsets. Brelyon has brought optical, mechanical, electrical, software, computer graphics, computational display engineers to achieve this, which is a testament to the complexity of this challenge, realizing the long-sought-after monocular depth in displays one step at a time.
"The Brelyon Team truly embodies the scope of this award by not only making technical achievements in optical engineering but also supporting education and public appreciation of optical engineering through workshops, events, talks, courses, and publications," said Michal Lipson, Optica's 2023 President. "We commend them for their outstanding engineering achievements and outreach efforts."
Brelyon's breakthrough has been realized by combining techniques from time-folded optics, emerging computer graphics and machine learning techniques, human vision science, as well as optical surface design to enhance and control the signal purity and image perception quality.
"Cameras and displays are usually known to be the dual or inverse of each other, but while we have had focus control in cameras almost since the beginning of photography, controlling the focal cues and depth in displays has been very difficult," said Ramesh Raskar, Professor at MIT Media Lab. "This is because displays have very large apertures and integrating large refractive optics is not practical. Additionally the computer has to learn and predict what segment of light should be shown at what angle and depth. Brelyon has been able to address this problem using a different interpolation approach to control depth in these scales."
"The human visual system critically relies on focus cues for accurate depth perception," said Gordon Wetzstein, Professor of Electrical Engineering and, by courtesy, of Computer Science at Stanford University. "While many emerging display technologies have been targeted to solve the lack of support of these perceptually important cues, none have solved this problem. Among the many benefits of having a display with focus cue support are the ability to dial in your prescription in software, to create more realistic experiences, and also to create more visually comfortable experiences. I am excited to see Breylon take on this important challenge with a new and promising technical approach.
Brelyon's technology is being used for enterprise visualization such as simulation and training, teleoperations, automotive, and medical applications where a sense of panorama and realism in depth is critical to the user experience. The features of this technology have enabled compact immersive displays as well as multi-depth visualization engines for navigation and data visualization as early adopters, while the gaming market has also shown significant interest.
"At AMD our goal is to enable best-in-class gaming experiences, and that requires pushing the boundaries of computer graphics together with display technologies," said Frank Azor, Chief Architect of Gaming Solutions at AMD. "Brelyon's high-bandwidth virtual display is one such technology where you can start to see the benefits of coupling high-end graphics cards with light-field engineering."
The Paul F. Forman Team Engineering Excellence Award was established in 1989 and named in remembrance of Paul F. Forman, who helped raise visibility for the optical engineering field in 2007. The award recognizes technical achievements such as product engineering, process, software and patent development, as well as contributions to society such as engineering education, publication and management, and public appreciation of optical engineering. Read more from Optica here.
About Brelyon
Headquartered in San Mateo, CA, Brelyon is a technology pioneer in hardware and software technologies for headset-less immersive experiences. Helmed by a founding team of scientists and industry executives from MIT, UCF, DARPA and IMAX, Brelyon has developed the world's first no-headset display technology with monocular depth. Companies interested in using brelyon solutions, please visit www.brelyon.com.
About Optica
Optica (formerly OSA), Advancing Optics and Photonics Worldwide, is the society dedicated to promoting the generation, application, archiving and dissemination of knowledge in the field. Founded in 1916, it is the leading organization for scientists, engineers, business professionals, students and others interested in the science of light. Optica's renowned publications, meetings, online resources and in-person activities fuel discoveries, shape real-life applications and accelerate scientific, technical and educational achievement.
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