MEMS scanners and emerging 3D and interactive Augmented Reality display applications

MEMS scanners have advanced rapidly during the last 20 years thanks to the excellent mechanical and optical properties offered by silicon. They have been used in various display and imaging products. The performance of high resolution and high frequency MEMS laser scanners is close to meeting the demands of full HD displays (-120 million pixels per second). Important performance metrics and the performance of various electromagnetic, electrostatic, and piezoelectric actuated MEMS scanners developed in our group are reviewed and recent improvements in the piezoelectric actuated resonant MEMS scanner is presented. Second part of the paper is about some of the emerging 3D and interactive Augmented-Reality display applications enabled by pico-projectors using MEMS scanners. Those technologies are expected to play an important role in the future of human-computer interface.