Microvision gift bolsters innovative HIT lab project

By Rob Harrill
News & Information

Officials at the University’s Human Interface Technology Laboratory say they felt a touch of déjà vu last week in accepting a gift from a local company.

The $250,000 gift, from Microvision Inc., is to continue research on the Virtual Retinal Display (VRD), a technology that projects a computer display or a virtual image directly into the user’s eye and has been a groundbreaking project for the lab. Microvision was created in 1993 to commercialize the technology.

Winyu Chinthammit, a research associate at the UW’s HIT lab, looks at a virtual retinal display as an image is beamed into his eye.

“This has been our flagship project - it’s the one that really put us on the map,” said Tom Furness, HIT Lab director. “It’s exciting to see the company in a position to provide funding back the to the laboratory so we can continue to lay the golden eggs.”

The concept has proven workable, and now Microvision is coming back to the birthplace of the VRD for help in taking the next step.

“We’ve taken it from concept to feasibility, and now we’re going from feasibility to application,” said Stephen Willey, executive vice president of Microvision. “To do that you have to be very creative, and that’s what a university does best. Our continued relationship with the HIT Lab will be one of the important arrows in Microvision’s quiver.”

Most of the gift will support graduate students working on the VRD project, Furness said, with a portion going toward equipment. The lab also has two National Science Foundation grants totaling about $750,000 for research on the VRD.

The VRD was developed at the HIT Lab in 1991. The device essentially uses the eye as its canvas to create images by projecting a beam of light into the pupil and scanning an image directly on the retina. The VRD’s ability to generate a high-resolution 3-D environment in a device the size of a pair of eyeglasses opens a wide array of possibilities. Pilots could use it for easy access to information while flying. Surgeons could view patient MRIs while operating. Instead of staring at a monitor, computer users could simply don a pair of glasses. The VRD also holds the promise of improving viewing for those with poor vision.

In 1998, the HIT Lab won the Discover Magazine Award for Technological Innovation for its work on the VRD.