JPH0340692A - Stereoscopic picture display method - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To expand an area from which a correct stereoscopic picture is observed by making each renticular lens corresponding to plural display picture elements and switching picture information displayed on plural display picture elements to input rays of a right picture and a left picture respectively to the right eye and the left eye of an observer based on the position of both the eyes of the observer. CONSTITUTION:A display device A is constituted by adhering a renticular lens sheet with renticular lenses 2 provided in parallel thereto to a front face of a display element 1. A both-eye position detection means D detects the position of both eyes of an observer M and a left/right changeover means C selects a drive circuit B so that the ray for left and right eyes strikes on the left and right eyes of the observer correctly among display picture elements of the display device A. That is, 4 display picture elements (display picture elements 4-7) are handled as one set and when the position of the head is 21, a correct stereoscopic image is observed. When the position of the head is 22, the left/right of the picture is inverted and in this case, a left eye picture is displayed to the display picture elements 4, 5 and the right eye picture is displayed to the display picture elements 6, 7. When the position of the head is 23 or 24, the processing is similarly applied..

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Field of Industrial Application] The present invention relates to a stereoscopic image display method applicable to stereoscopic televisions and the like.

[Conventional technology]

Conventionally, in television receivers, computer terminals, etc., CR
T (cathode ray tube), liquid crystal display elements, plasma displays, etc. are used to display images, but the images displayed by these are flat, and it is not possible to obtain a sense of depth like that of a real object. Can not. This is because when looking at a real object, the right and left eyes see different images, that is, there is binocular parallax, but existing general television receivers cannot provide binocular parallax. be. In order to overcome this drawback, various methods have been studied.

There is a method of obtaining a stereoscopic image by wearing polarized glasses or time-sharing shutter glasses and viewing a display that displays images of the right eye in even fields and the left eye in odd fields.

However, this method has the disadvantage that not only is it troublesome to wear glasses, but also that the image of the other party wearing glasses becomes extremely unnatural during a videophone call.

As a method to overcome this drawback, there is a method using lenticular lenses that displays stereoscopic images without using glasses (Reference 1: Kyoku, -Nose, Ishibashi,! & Saki: "Using a 3D Display 2 Study of ocular 3D display,” IEICE National Conference (1989) D-274).

Here, the lenticular lens is an arrangement of a large number of rod-shaped microlenses having a semicylindrical cross section.

[Problem to be solved by the invention]

This method is highly practical, as it does not require glasses, uses a flat display element so no adjustment is required during device manufacturing, and can display full-color moving images. However, in order to obtain a correct stereoscopic image, the relative position of the user's eyes with respect to the display device is limited. That is, the correct stereoscopic image cannot be seen from any direction, but the left and right images may be reversed depending on the direction, or the seam between the left and right images may be visible.

In addition, a method that detects the position of the head and swaps the left and right images (Reference 2 Ninose, Kyoya 2 Ishibashi: "Study of head tracking stereoscopic image display device", IEICE Spring National Conference 5)
(see D-3-17), it is possible to prevent the left and right images from reversing when the head is moved, but there is still the drawback that discontinuous images can be seen at the point where the swap occurs. It is.

This invention solves the problem of image discontinuity at the point where the left and right images are swapped when the head moves, and makes it possible to display a continuous and natural 3D image, thereby improving the area where the correct 3D image can be seen. The object of the present invention is to provide a stereoscopic image display method that can enlarge the image.

[Means to solve the problem]

In the stereoscopic image display method according to the present invention, a plurality of display pixels are made to correspond to each lenticular lens constituting a lenticular sheet, and based on the detected positions of the observer's binoculars, the right and left eyes of the observer are respectively aligned. The image information displayed on a plurality of display pixels is switched so that the light rays of the image and the left image are input.

(Operation) In this invention, even if the observer moves, the light rays of the right image and the left image are always input to the right and left eyes based on the positions of both eyes, so that correct stereoscopic vision can be achieved.

[Example] Fig. 1 is a block diagram showing the configuration of an apparatus for carrying out the present invention, where M is an observer, A is a display device, and a lenticular lens sheet in which lenticular lenses are arranged side by side is used as a display element. It is constructed by pasting C on the front side. B is a drive circuit that drives the display pixels of the display device A to form a desired image, and C is a left/right switching means that allows the display of the display pixels for the left eye and for the right eye to be performed by the viewer M, which will be described later. It is switched depending on the position. D is a binocular position detecting means that detects the binocular position of the observer M with respect to the display device A.

Next, an outline of the operation will be explained.

When the observer M moves, the relative relationship with the display device A constantly changes. Therefore, the binocular position detection means detects the binocular positions of the observer M, and among the display pixels of the display device A, the light beams for the left eye and the right eye are correctly aligned. The drive circuit B is switched by the left/right switching means C so that the As a result, the light rays of the left-eye display are incident on the left eye of the observer M, and the light rays of the right-eye display are incident on the right eye.

FIGS. 2, 3, 4, and 5 show configuration diagrams of a first embodiment of the present invention. FIGS. 10 and 11 are configuration diagrams of the prior art corresponding to the first embodiment. Each of the above figures (a) is an explanatory plan view, and each of the above figures (b) is an enlarged view of the X portion indicated by the broken line in each figure (a).

6, 7, 8, and 9 show the configuration of the second embodiment of the present invention, and FIGS. 12 and 13 show the configuration of the prior art corresponding to the second embodiment. FIG. 2 is an explanatory plan view.

In these figures, 1 is a liquid crystal display element, 2 is a lenticular lens, and 3 is one pitch thereof. 4 to 9 are display pixels of the liquid crystal display pixel 1.

10 is one period of display pixels, and 2 display pixels equals 1 period.
One cycle is for two pixels if it is a set of pixels, and for four pixels if it is a set of four pixels.

For convenience of explanation, the prior art corresponding to the first embodiment will be described first.

In FIG. 10, the lenticular lens 2 is a semicylindrical lens, and its cross section has a visible arc. In FIG. 10(b), the display pixel 8 displays a right eye image, and the display image 9 displays a left eye image. The light emitted from these display pixels 8.9 passes through the lenticular lens 2 and spreads into space. Therefore, Fig. 10 (a
), if the user's eyes are located in the right-eye image visible region 11 hatched with diagonal lines, the display pixels 8 can be seen from there. Furthermore, if the user's eyes are located in the left-eye image visible region 12 hatched with dots, the display pixels 9 can be seen from there. Therefore, if the user's head is at position 21, for example, the user's right eye is in the right eye image visible area 11 and his left eye is in the left image visible area 12, so he can see the correct stereoscopic image. However, when the user's head is at position 22, the right eye of the user is in the left eye image visible area 12 and the user's left eye is in the right eye image visible area 11, so the left and right sides are reversed. This problem can be solved by the above (
This problem can be solved by using the technology shown in Reference 2) that detects the position of the head and swaps the left and right images. That is, if it is detected that the head is at position 22, for example by a method using an infrared sensor, the left eye image is displayed on the display pixel 8, and the right eye image is displayed on the display pixel 9, as shown in FIG. For example, the right eye enters the right-eye image visible area 11 and the left eye enters the left-eye image visible area 12, so that a correct stereoscopic image can be viewed.

However, there are problems that cannot be solved by such left-right reversal. For example, when the head is at position 23, the user's eyes are in the right eye image visible area 11 and the left eye image visible area 12.
It's just on the boundary. In such a case, problems may occur, depending on the design of the lens system, such as the image not being visible at all, the image appearing double, or the right-eye image and left-eye image switching unnaturally in the middle of the screen. Even if the right-eye image and left-eye image are swapped as shown in FIG. 11, they are still on the boundary, so this problem could not be solved by technology.

On the other hand, when the user's head is located far from the display surface, as shown in 24, both the user's right and left eyes are located in the same area (first
In the case of Figure 0, there is a problem that the three-dimensional effect is lost because the person is in the right eye image visible region 11). This problem also applies to the 11th
Even if the right-eye image and left-eye image were swapped as shown in the figure, both eyes would still end up in the same area, so conventional technology could not solve the problem.

This invention is intended to improve the above two problems.

In this invention, as shown in FIG. 2, four display pixels (display pixels 4 to 7) are treated as one set.

The situation in FIG. 2 is similar to that in FIG. When the head position is 21, a correct stereoscopic image can be seen. When the head position is 22, the left and right sides are reversed, but in this case, the left eye image is displayed on display pixel 4 and display pixel 5, and the right eye image is displayed on display pixel 6 and display pixel 7, as shown in FIG. Bye. That is, the situation in FIG. 3 is similar to the situation in FIG. 11.

A feature of this method is that it can also be used when the head position is at 23.24. When the head position is 23, as shown in FIG. 4, the left eye image may be displayed on display pixels 4 and 7, and the right eye image may be displayed on display pixels 5 and 6. Also, if the head position is at 24, the 5th
As shown in the figure, the left eye image is displayed on display pixel 5 and display pixel 6,
The right eye image may be displayed on display pixel 4 and display pixel 7.

In this way, when the eye position is on the boundary between the right-eye image visible area 11 and the left-eye image visible area 12, or when both eyes are in the same area, the conventional technology cannot obtain a correct 3D image. However, according to this invention, display pixels 4 to 7
Correct display is possible by appropriately switching the image to be displayed on the screen automatically (for example, using an infrared sensor) or manually (for example, using a push button switch) depending on the positions 21 to 24 of the head.

6 to 9 relate to a second embodiment of the invention. The differences from the first embodiment are as follows.

In the first embodiment, although a correct stereoscopic image can be seen near the center of the screen, it has the disadvantage that the left and right sides may appear reversed toward the periphery of the screen. This drawback occurs when the screen size becomes larger than the distance between the user's eyes, making it unsuitable for larger screens. The second embodiment solves this problem and makes it possible to obtain a correct stereoscopic image even on a large screen. The solution to this problem is an existing technology (see Japanese Patent Application No. 1-462202), and its configuration is shown in FIG. Comparing FIG. 12 with the conventional example shown in FIG. 10, a feature is that one pitch 3 of the lenticular lens 2 is larger than the period 10 of the display pixels. This is so that the light emitted from the center points of the left and right display pixels 9.8, that is, the points 312, 32, 33, etc., is collected at one point 34. When this condition is met, if the center of the observer M's eyes is near the point 34, stereoscopic vision is possible from there even when looking in any direction from the points 311, 32, and 33. be. That is, even if the liquid crystal display element 1 is quite large, it is possible to accurately view stereoscopically not only the center but also from every corner. In contrast, in the first embodiment, correct stereoscopic vision is possible only strictly at the center of the display. In the second embodiment, the surface of the display is spread over a substantially constant distance 111r! They are located alternately in the places where they are placed. FIGS. 12 and 13 show examples of configurations of the prior art, with FIG. 12 corresponding to FIG. 10 and FIG. 13 corresponding to FIG. 11. 6 to 9 are configuration diagrams of a second embodiment of the present invention, in which FIG. 6 is shown in FIG. 2, FIG. 7 is shown in FIG. 3, FIG. 8 is shown in FIG. 4, and FIG. The figures correspond to FIG. 5, respectively. The visible area of the left and right images in Figure 6 is the same as that of Figure 12, and the visible area of the left and right images of Figure 7 is the same as that of Figure 13, but the visible area of the left and right images of Figures 8 and 9 is the same as that of Figure 12. It includes parts not covered in Figures 6 and 7. Therefore, there is an effect of expanding the area where correct stereoscopic vision is possible.

In addition, in the above embodiment, an example was taken where a set of 4 pixels were used as display pixels, but instead of 4 pixels, N pixels (N
is a number exceeding 2), a similar effect can be obtained.

(Effects of the Invention) As explained above, in the present invention, each lenticular lens constituting the lenticular sheet is associated with a plurality of display pixels, and the observer's By switching the image information displayed on multiple pixels so that the right and left image light rays are input to the right and left eyes, respectively, the problem caused by the boundary between the right-eye image visible area and the left-eye image visible area is resolved. Because
This has the advantage of expanding the area in which stereoscopic images can be viewed.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing the configuration of an apparatus for carrying out this invention, and FIGS.
Figures 6, 7, 8 and 9 are diagrams for explaining the second embodiment of the invention, and Figures 10 and 11 are diagrams for explaining the second embodiment of the invention. FIGS. 12 and 13 are diagrams for explaining a conventional example corresponding to the first embodiment, and FIGS. 12 and 13 are diagrams for explaining a conventional example corresponding to the second embodiment. In the figure, 1 is a liquid crystal display element, 2 is a lenticular lens, 3 is one pitch thereof, 4 to 9 are display pixels, 10 is one cycle of display pixels, 11 is a right eye image visible area, 12 is a left eye image visible area, 21 to 24 are head positions, and 31 to 34 are points. Figure 1 Cause-7 Display pixels 21 to 24 Head evil device Figure Figure 1 Figure 5 Figure 9 Figure Figure Figure 9 Figure 0 Figure 1-10! 8.9 Display pixel 1st Fig. 1--1 (, l-u 2nd Fig. 31-34 points

Claims (1)

[Claims] By using a display device in which a lenticular sheet consisting of lenticular lenses arranged side by side is attached to the surface of a display pixel, image information of a right image and a left image inputted from two cameras are displayed on the display pixel, respectively. In a method for performing stereoscopic vision, a plurality of display pixels are made to correspond to each lenticular lens constituting the lenticular sheet, and a right image and a right image are respectively displayed to the right and left eyes of the viewer based on the detected positions of both eyes of the viewer. A stereoscopic image display method characterized by switching image information displayed on the plurality of display pixels so that the light beam of the left image is input.