Artificial Blur Effect for Optical See-Through Near-Eye Displays

Saliency modulation has significant potential for various applications. In our pursuit of implementing saliency modulation for optical see-through near-eye displays, we introduce a blur effect to reduce the sharpness of specific regions while preserving the sharpness of others. In this study, we use a digital micromirror device (DMD) to separate incoming light from a scene into sharp and blurred regions. To achieve this, we integrate an electrically tunable lens (ETL) that operates in its zero optical power mode when the reflected light from the DMD represents the sharp region (i.e., masking the blur region). Conversely, when the reflected light indicates the blur region, the ETL adjusts to non-zero optical powers. Importantly, these modulations occur at a speed that surpasses the critical flicker frequency threshold of the human eye. Furthermore, we propose an algorithm to mitigate artifacts around the border region between the sharp and blur regions that appear due to the magnification of the ETL. We have also developed a prototype system to demonstrate the feasibility of our method.