From ORs to Battlefields: How Kopin Microdisplays Make Doctors and Soldiers Better
From the operating room to life or death combat, Kopin microdisplays are at the top of their class.
There's one company the US Military trusts more than any other to supply microdisplay interfaces to its active-duty personnel. Believe it or not, it's not LG, Epson, or even Samsung or Sony. Instead, it's an American firm that not many outside the defense sector are familiar with, called Kopin. As I was about to discover, Kopin's range of microdisplays goes far beyond military applications. If you need surgery, one of Kopin's microdisplays might even help save your life.
An American Microdisplay Titan
Inside a conference room in a swanky hotel in Times Square, Kopin took an hour out of their day to show Cars Travel Tech their latest multi-use microdisplay technology. Using a handy demonstration board filled with model microdisplays, Kopin flexed just how vast their production capabilities are. From legacy formats like VGA and LCD to cutting-edge OLED and proprietary MicroLED displays, it's all scaled to fit devices like heads-up display goggles or eye movement sensors.
With microdisplay fabrication facilities in Reston, Virginia, and Dalgety Bay in Scotland, the Massachusetts-headquartered company ships hardware to every continent on Earth. Right in front of us here in New York, some of the best Kopin microdisplay technology was sitting right there.
In military applications, Kopin microdisplays can mean the difference between mission success and mission failure. By identifying friendlies, weeding out hostiles, and judging their distances from the operator, Kopin microdisplays transform standard-issue optics hardware into smart devices in every sense.
Top-Shelf Military AR In the Dark
Take the Kopin Darkwave, a clip-in device that brings every mission parameter imaginable to everyday military low-light optics without modifying the supporting device at all. In close combat, where situational awareness is paramount, the Kopin Darkwave's AR capability is an extra edge, providing a layer of awareness and, therefore, a layer of safety that no fighting force prior to the late-2010s had ever been afforded. But even by the standards of a decade's research in military-spec AR hardware, the Darkwave is a cut above.
For starters, Darkwave's full color overlay capability enhances night vision detection and is nothing short of top-shelf. In demonstrations that allowed us to view a Darkwave clip-in with night vision goggles, we experienced head tracking capability and saw symbology with a see-through augmented reality overlay. We also saw a separate thermal unit, which could detect the faintest thermal trace of someone's hand leaning on a padded wall. With the lights all the way off and the room around devoid of light, we could still see the remaining thermal print long after our Kopin rep removed his hand from the wall. In the future, Kopin could possibly aim to add this thermal feature to the DarkWAVE. Even if you're not a military contractor, it's not hard to see the practical upsides of such an advanced system.
All manner of different metrics can be toggled and configured to the precise needs of individual missions and can be modified via over-the-air updates if parameters change. In so many ways, Darkwave's AR capability makes allied fighting forces worldwide eager for its adoption. But when paired with off-the-shelf goggles with a very sensitive low-light sensor array, the pair can't operate outside of very low-light environments.
In the Daytime As Well
That's where DAYVAS, its daytime-readable counterpart, comes in. Using a similar clip-on form factor to the Darkwave, DAYVAS provides the same data-link juggernaut capability that makes a difference in combat during the day. Far beyond your average civilian-grade set of AR goggles, DAYVAS's powerful microdisplay delivers a degree of fidelity beyond anything Meta or HTC offers at the moment. Better still, it's adaptable to essentially all helmet sizes and form factors that the US Military currently offers. From assisting main battle tank drivers and fifth-gen stealth fighter pilots, to doctors and surgeons, Kopin Technologies, loosely based around a similar architecture, covers the full gamut of combat-based AR applications.
Controlling Drones With Your Eyes
But even beyond AR, Kopin's state-of-the-art sensor array technology is now being fielded via a device that can control drones with eye movement alone. Via the groundbreaking NeuralDisplay prototype, this AI-powered microdisplay can track the movement of the wearer's pupils and apply it to real-life movements of autonomously operated systems. Like the clever head movement-operated IHADSS system applied to modern US Army attack helicopters' main machine guns, the NeuralDisplay could bring similar functionality to drone operation.
Unlike other systems that track general head movement, tracking the precise movement of the eye and making micro-adjustments to a drone's flight path is immensely impactful for allied fighting forces. Via the lowest-latency data streaming currently available, any combat device equipped with the NeuralDisplay headset has a distinct edge when under heavy enemy fire. Without the need for heavy eye-tracking cameras, NeuralDisplay is not much bulkier than the average pair of sporty sunglasses. When you're wearing the device for hours at a time, these little things really do matter.
Your Doctor’s New Best Friend
But what about applications beyond the military, beyond combat? How can Kopin's finest microdisplays be applied to a civilian sector of the utmost importance? Through the HMDmd CR3 wearable monitor purpose-built for surgery, surgeons and doctors of all stripes have access to the highest-fidelity, lowest-latency video feeds currently possible during minimally invasive procedures. By melding the realms of virtual reality and augmented reality and using aspects of both, attending physicians have higher-fidelity views of sensitive human tissue under the knife than ever before.
Better still, HMDmd CR3 can receive real-time updates on pressing medical information streamed right to the glasses without once putting the scalpel down. For physicians conducting robotic procedures via robot-operated surgical instruments, HMDmd CR3 is a line of defense against human error in critical situations where the difference between life and death can be a matter of millimeters. Even during mundane tasks like diagnostics, the potential to cover blind spots for very human doctors using real-time data links gives the best possible opportunity for an optimal outcome.
From a sea of military-centric microdisplay technology, HMDmd CR3 proves that very similar hardware is easily adaptable to be used for the greater good. In a consumer space where VR capability usually starts and ends with the HTC Vive and Oculus Quest, Kopin's application of similar tech scaled up for professional applications shows us where the consumer space will be in just a few years' time. In the meantime, such technology is better suited for professional applications. But just you wait, time has a way of making high-end tech trickle down to the mainstream.