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Technology Stocks : Kopin Corp. (KOPN) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Raymond T. Teruay who wrote (452)	7/17/1998 2:27:00 PM
From: kinkblot	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1820

From Military & Aerospace Electronics, June 98, page 19: "Helmet-mounted displays are ready to leave the laboratory and head for the field" The article gives some details on the Comanche helicopter HMD stuff Kopin is doing with DARPA funding. Production is still two or three years off if Kopin gets the nod, so this is only a side-project for now. There is a good photo of Kaiser's demo helmet based on the Kopin 1280 x 1024 pixel SXGA microdisplay. For comparison, 30 SXGA displays fit on a 6-inch wafer, versus 300 CyberDisplays. Pixel size for the high-resolution SXGA is 12 microns. This excerpt describes the images the pilot would see: . . . . . . . . . . Lead Comanche role . With Comanche, designers integrate the HMD into the helmet to enable the pilot to view imagery overlain with symbology such as air speed, heading, and threats. Imagery can come from three different sources: a head-steerable forward-looking infrared camera, a head-steerable low-light TV camera, or a miniature image-intensified CCD mounted on the helmet. The Comanche's pilot helmet is a see-through design that enables the pilot to spend most of his time looking out the window, rather than looking down into the cockpit at his instruments. . The HMD is also a binocular device, meaning that two different sensor views are available for each eye. Data can come either from two sensors, or from a single image source through image processing. The HMD's optics combine the two images into a 30-by-52-degree field of view with a 30-degree overlap. Two 1280-by-1024-pixel displays create a 1716-by-960-pixel image, with light for the transmissive LCD delivered to the helmet through a fiber-optic bundle. . Officials at Kaiser recently delivered to designers at Sikorski a proof-of-principle HMD that incorporates the Kopin 1280-by-1024-pixel microdisplays. Experts from a team lead by Raj Kaushik are carrying out initial testing of this high-resolution HMD in a simulator. "So far, we are very pleased with the new HMD, particularly the fast video response, which we were concerned about," Kaushik says. The SXGA displays are the result of a new production line that Kopin officials are using in Taiwan. . . . . . . . . . . Symbology is visible in daylight, but they are working to improve display contrast for better viewing of imagery, which tends to get washed out by direct sunlight. That is perhaps the toughest challenge presented by the see-through design. Also shown is a wearable computer from Boeing that has for the display either a monochrome VGA panel or a monochrome VGA-HMD using a Kopin AMLCD. A few working units were shipped to special operations forces in May and are currently being evaluated. WT