Optofidelity Blog Explaining the importance of correlation between R&D and manufacturing of XR waveguides

As the AR / VR / XR industry grows, it requires precise image quality measurements to build high-quality devices in a volume manufacturing environment. Until now, many XR manufacturers haven’t had the possibility of volume manufacturing. The industry has been focused on fine-tuning waveguide technology in an R&D environment. This is all changing, as market demands increase, and as manufacturers have the possibility of producing a large volume of devices. The principles of testing waveguides for XR devices remain the same in the R&D phase as production phase, but the primary objective is very different. In production environments, the manufacturer is interested in testing waveguides to see if they will pass or fail an acceptable range of image quality. This range should be previously defined in the R&D environment, where a wide variety of measurements are necessary to determine the quality of the waveguides across many parameters.  During R&D, designs are being sampled, and materials are being explored. The metrology testing at this phase could be looking at upwards of 20 parameters (see graphic below) at different eye-box positions – asking for the utility of each parameter in defining the overall quality of the waveguide.