A research team has presented an optical design for augmented reality (AR) glasses that combines anamorphic freeform surfaces with a holographic optical combiner to produce full-colour images. The approach aims to address one of the main hurdles of AR glasses: achieving a wide field of view, uniform colour and a compact, lightweight form factor at the same time.

Glasses-type AR displays face a trade-off between size, image quality and aberration correction. Conventional designs based on spherical or aspherical optics often require multiple elements to correct distortions, increasing the volume and weight of the device. Freeform surfaces allow light to be shaped with greater freedom and reduce the number of components, while the holographic combiner overlays the virtual image on the real scene with high luminous efficiency.

The proposal described in the paper integrates both elements into an anamorphic optical system, that is, with different powers in the horizontal and vertical directions, adapted to the geometry of the eye and the display format. This configuration allows aberrations to be corrected more efficiently and maintains colour uniformity across the field of view, a critical point for full-colour augmented reality applications.

The work is part of the ongoing effort to bring augmented reality to consumer devices in the form of conventional glasses. If the design is realised in commercial prototypes, it could enable lighter AR glasses with better image quality for applications ranging from assisted navigation to real-time data visualisation.