LEIA Inc

LEIA Inc
Private
Industry Consumer electronics
Founded 2013
Founder David Fattal, Pierre-Emmanuel Evreux, Zhen Peng
Headquarters Menlo Park, California, USA
Website www.leia3d.com

LEIA Inc is a Silicon Valley startup company developing an interactive holographic display for mobile devices.[1] LEIA is also developing software to facilitate content creation for its holographic platform. While its main target is mobile applications (wearables, Internet of Things (IoT); smartphones, tablets), LEIA’s technology is also aimed at the AR/VR, automotive and medical markets.[2]

LEIA’s display uses standard LCD technology augmented by a proprietary diffraction layer that allows multiple viewers to experience the 3D stereoscopic effect with full parallax and smooth transitions between views. It differs from the 3D displays on the market as no glasses or eye-tracking are required, and a multitude of people can view the effect from a wide field of view (about 60°).[3]

The company was founded by former HP Labs researchers and became completely independent in January 2014, after closing a series A funding round.

LEIA Inc is headquartered in Menlo Park, California, with a nanofabrication center in Palo Alto and pilot line in Suzhou, China.

History

The early days : Laser-based multiview display prototype developed at HP Labs in 2011

LEIA’s display technology relies on technological breakthrough - a multiview backlight - developed by the core LEIA team during their tenure at HP Labs in Palo Alto.[4] The breakthrough came as an offshoot of the team’s research effort on optical interconnects, the use of Photonics to carry light signals inside and between computer chips.

After working on a laser-based version in 2011, the team transitioned to a more standard LED-based illumination system in 2012 when they realized that the technology was compatible with LCD displays.[5]

In 2013, the first dynamic prototypes were demonstrated and the technology was featured on the cover of Nature Magazine.[6] MIT’s Technology Review named David Fattal, LEIA Inc’s Founder and CEO, French Innovator of the year for the invention of the multiview backlight the same year.[4]

In January 2014, LEIA Inc was officially founded as an independent entity.

In March 2015, LEIA Inc showcased their technology at the MWC in Barcelona, drawing the attention of multiple different news sources (WSJ,[7] Reuters,[8] CNN,[9] Yahoo!Tech.[10]).

In October 2015, LEIA Inc released a Holographic Dev Kit to let developers experiment with interactive holograms on a 2.2’’ display.

In April 2016, LEIA Inc announced a partnership with Technology and Media group Altice to release a holographic smartphone in the European market by end of 2017.[11]

Technology

Diffractive Lightfield Backlighting (DLBTM) solution

In its current iteration, the display developed by LEIA Inc is a diffraction-based system able to project up to 64 different images in different directions of space. The diffractive layer extracts LED light from a light guide and forms narrow light beams that propagate towards the viewers, unlike regular LED or LCD that send a beam of light in one direction only. The intensity of each light beam is independently modulated by a dedicated pixel on a front-facing LCD panel. Color can be achieved either via spatial-multiplexing (RGB color filters on dedicated LCD subpixels) or via temporal-multiplexing (time-sequential RGB illumination).[12]

3D Holographic phone concept

The display achieves a wide 60° field of view[10] and offers full parallax to create a seamless 3D impression regardless of head-motion (horizontal / vertical motion, tilt or rotation). The diffracted beam parameters can be adjusted to suppress skipping or “dark zones” between views and repeating images outside the field of view.[13]

Since the front-facing element of the display is a regular LCD panel, it is readily compatible with touch and hover-panel technologies and can be integrated into any screen. It can also switch between displaying 2D and 3D content, without any hardware or software modification.

Due to the technology of the display, video of the screen caught on a regular camera will not show the effect. The 3D effect can only be seen with the naked eye.

Display characteristics

Holographic IDE

LEIA Inc has developed a Unity 3D plug-in to facilitate the conversion of existing 3D or VR content or creation of new content for its holographic platform. A WebGL API is also available as an extension of Three.js.

Awards

LEIA Inc.’s founder David Fattal was named French Innovator of the year by the MIT Technology Review in 2013 for the invention of the multiview backlight, and was featured on their global list of ‘35 Innovators Under 35’ the same year.[14]

"There has been very little innovation in the basic physics for making 3-D images since early in the 20th century. This new display is transforming a technology that’s been around for 100 years." - MIT Technology Review, 2013

LEIA’s core multiview backlight concept was featured on the cover of Nature in the March 21st 2013 issue.[6][15]

References

  1. ↑ Mike Orcutt (25 February 2015). "Nanotech Converts Conventional LCDs into Glasses-Free 3-D Displays". MIT Technology Review.
  2. ↑ Jennifer Welsh (26 March 2013). "Soon We'll Get To View Holograms On Our Phones And Tablets". Business Insider.
  3. ↑ “Scientists Have Created A Glasses-Free, 3D Display”, The Guardian, March 2013
  4. 1 2 "New 3D Display Could Let Phones And Tablets Produce Holograms", MIT Technology Review, March 2013
  5. ↑ David Fattal “Mobile Holography”, Stanford talks, April 2014
  6. 1 2 “A Multi-Directional Backlight For A Wide-Angle, Glasses-Free Three-Dimensional Display”, Nature, March 2013
  7. ↑ "Bringing Holograms to Smartphones and Watches". Youtube. Wall Street Journal. 6 March 2016.
  8. ↑ "Star Wars-inspired prototype creates holographic display". Reuters. Reuters. 5 March 2015.
  9. ↑ Parke, Phoebe (6 March 2015). "Mobile World Congress 2015: Five glimpses of the future". CNN. CNN.
  10. 1 2 3 "The Holographic Smartphone Display Is Real, and It's Awesome", Yahoo Tech, March 2015
  11. ↑ "Altice group and LEIA Inc announce strategic partnership to bring 3D Holographic smartphone to consumer" (PDF). Altice Group. Altice Group. 23 May 2016.
  12. ↑ "On Our Way To Glasses-Free 3D", HP Labs, 2013
  13. ↑ “LEIA Aims To Bring Holographic Displays To Your Phone”, Extreme Tech, April 2014
  14. ↑ Video, Innovators Under 35: David Fattal, TR35, November 2013
  15. ↑ “'Hologram-Lite' Idea For 3D Phone Displays”, Nature, March 2013
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