Vehicular Transparent Surfaces' Patterned Film for Onboard Pico Projection Applications

Tinted vehicle windows are commonly used for different applications, among which are providing privacy, reducing transmitted sunlight in hot climates, and sometimes just for aesthetics among other uses. The work reported here was geared towards retaining these traditional aspects of tinted vehicle windows while adding a new display aspect component for custom display applications. We applied a low cost dual purpose diffusely transmitting and diffusely reflective pattern onto a polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic film. This custom-patterned film was then applied to both transparent and conventionally tinted vehicle window glass to observe the change in image quality projected onto them. For image projection we used a low cost VGA resolution, 45 lum liquid crystal on silicon (LCoS) Pico projector. Images were observed and recorded under the same ambient light environment. The field results showed significantly improved perceptibility with 200:1 contrast ratio, on tinted vehicle windows augmented with our custom pattern printed film. Whereas images projected on surfaces without the custom patterned film were literally imperceptible.