Tolerance Analysis of Focus-adjustable Head-mounted Displays

Since the recent slowdown in the smartphone market, studies for wearable devices are briskly being carried out to find new markets, such as virtual reality devices. In this paper, a head-mounted display (HMD) which provides expanded virtual images before human eyes by enlarging images of a small display was designed, and the tolerance analysis method for a focus-adjustable HMD based on afocal optical systems was studied. There are two types of HMDs: a see-through type that allows the user to view the surroundings, and a see-close type where the user can only view the display screen; the former is used in this study. While designing the system, we allowed a lens within the system to be shifted to adjust its focus from +1 to -4 D (diopters). The yield of the designed systems was calculated by taking the worst-case scenario of a uniform distribution into account. Additionally, a longitudinal aberration was used rather than MTF for the tolerance analysis with respect to system performance. The sensitivity of the designed system was calculated by assigning a certain tolerance, and the focus lens shift was calculated to adjust the image surface variations resulting from the tolerance. The smaller the tolerance, the more expensive the unit price of the products. Very small tolerances may even be impossible to fabricate. Considering this, the appropriate tolerance was assigned; the maximum shift of the focus lens in which the image surface can be adjusted was obtained to find the changes in aberration and a good yield.