Optical compensation of flexible in-plane switching (IPS) mode liquid crystal display (LCD) using polycarbonate substrate with uniaxial optical anisotropy was achieved for wide viewing angle. We theoretically clarified that the slow axis of plastic substrate must be parallel to the absorption axis of polarizer and alignment direction of IPS mode LC. We successfully suppressed a light leakage in the dark state in a wide viewing angle range by fabricated device using uniaxial polycarbonate substrates. These results show that it is possible to realize a high quality flexible LCD using plastic substrates.

To develop a flexible liquid crystal display (LCD) with a wide viewing angle range and high contrast ratio, we have proposed a flexible blue-phase LC device sustained by polymer walls inside the LC cell. We clarified that the polymer walls can maintain a constant cell gap and suppress the generation of alignment defects of the blue-phase LC in a bending state.

The present study proposes a method for estimation of subjective image quality, for combinations of display physical factors, based on the Mahalanobis-Taguchi system in the field of quality engineering. The proposed method estimates subjective image quality by the estimated equation based on the Mahalanobis-Taguchi System and subjective evaluation experiments using the method of successive categories for images of which parameters are combinations of gamma, maximum luminance and minimum luminance. The estimated image quality is in good agreement with the experimental subjective image quality.

Binaural reproduction is one of the promising approaches to present a highly realistic virtual auditory space to a listener. Generally, binaural signals are reproduced using a set of headphones that leads to a simple implementation of such a system. In contrast, binaural signals can be presented to a listener using a technique called “transaural reproduction” which employs a few loudspeakers with crosstalk cancellation for compensating acoustic transmissions from the loudspeakers to both ears of the listener. The major advantage of transaural reproduction is that a listener is able to experience binaural reproduction without wearing any device. This leads to a more natural listening environment. However, in transaural reproduction, the listener is required to be still within a very narrow sweet spot because the crosstalk canceller is very sensitive to the listener's head position and orientation. To solve this problem, dynamic transaural systems have been developed by utilizing contact type head tracking. This paper introduces the development of a dynamic transaural system with non-contact head tracking which releases the listener from any attachment, thereby preserving the advantage of transaural reproduction. Experimental results revealed that sound images presented in the horizontal and median planes were localized more accurately when the system tracked the listener's head rotation than when the listeners did not rotate their heads or when the system did not track the listener's head rotation. These results demonstrate that the system works effectively and correctly with the listener's head rotation.

Due to the recent development of underlying hardware technology and improvement in installing environments, public display has been becoming more common and attracting more attention as a new type of signage. Any signage is required to make its content more attractive to its viewers by evaluating the current attractiveness on the fly, in order to deliver the message from the sender more effectively. However, most previous methods for public display require time to reflect the viewers' evaluations. In this paper, we present a novel system, called Mood-Learning Public Display, which automatically adapts its content design. This system utilizes viewers' involuntary behaviors as a sign of evaluation to make the content design more adapted to local viewers' tastes evolutionarily on site. The system removes the current gap between viewers' expectations and the content actually displayed on the display, and makes efficient mutual transmission of information between the cyberworld and the reality.

We estimated the dependence of the perceived depth on luminance ratio by increasing the distance between the front and rear planes of a depth-fused 3-D (DFD) display. When the distance is great, the perceived depth has the tendency of nonlinear dependence on luminance ratio, which is very different from the almost linear dependence in a short-distance conventional DFD display. In a long-distance DFD display, the perceived depth is split to near the front plane at 0-40% of the rear luminance, near the rear plane at 70-100%, and the midpoint of the front and rear planes at 40-60%. Thus, the luminance-ratio dependence of perceived depth changes widely with the distance.

Battery life and outdoor visibility are two of the most important features for mobile applications today. It is desirable to achieve both low power consumption and excellent outdoor visibility on the display device at the same time. We have previously reported a new RGBW method to realize low power consumption and high luminance with high image quality. In this paper, the basic concept of a new RGBW calculation utilizing an “Extended HSV color space” model is described, and also its performance, such as low power consumption, color image reproducibility and outdoor visibility is presented. The new method focuses on the luminance-increase ratio by means of a White signal for the display image data, and derives the appropriate RGBW signal and backlight PWM signal for every frame period. This dynamically controlled system solves the problems of conventional RGBW systems, and realizes the same image quality as a corresponding RGB display. In order to quantify its color image reproducibility, a spectroscopic measurement has been completed using the Macbeth Color Chart. In addition, the advantages of high luminance by the new RGBW method is described. The converted tone curve with an RGBW method provides very high luminance, such as 1,000cd/m2, and improved outdoor visibility. Finally, a newly developed 4.38-inch full-HD (1,080 × 1,920) 503ppi prototype LCD utilizing this new RGBW technology is described.

This study examines the robustness of image quality factors in various types of environment illumination using a parameter design in the field of quality engineering. Experimental results revealed that image quality factors are influenced by environment illuminations in the following order: minimum luminance, maximum luminance and gamma.

This paper introduces new FPGA design of user-monitoring system for power management of PC display. From the camera readings the system detects whether the user looks at the screen or not and produces signals to control the display backlight. The system provides over 88% eye detection accuracy at 8f/s image processing rate. We describe new eye-tracking algorithm and hardware and present the results of its experimental evaluation in prototype display power management system.

Three methods of presenting a three-dimensional (3-D) image – a real object, a protruding stereoscopic display, and the depth-fused 3-D (DFD) display – have different tendencies for the change in perceived depth produced when the visual acuity of the dominant eye is decreased by an occlusion foil. These different tendencies are estimated from the slope and correlation coefficient of the plot of perceived depth difference versus stimuli depth difference. This estimation was derived using the same experimental system setup composed of two displays and a half mirror for all three 3-D display methods. The perceived depth difference was measured for four subjects by calipers using two fingers. The slope and correlation coefficient had almost the same tendencies as follows. The real object had the smallest decrease among the three 3-D display methods when the dominant eye's visual acuity was decreased and the protruding stereoscopic display had the largest decrease. The DFD display method had an intermediate decrease between those of the real object and protruding stereoscopic display. When the dominant eye's visual acuity was high enough, the differences among the three 3-D display methods were small. When its visual acuity was decreased, the differences increased among the three 3-D display methods and became statistically significant.

The Liquid-crystal display (LCD) overdrive technique has been utilized to reduce motion blur on a display via a reduction in the response time. However, to measure the variation of the pixel amplitudes, it is necessary to store the previous frame using a large frame memory. To downscale the frame memory, block truncation coding (BTC) is commonly employed due to the simplicity of its implementation, even if some visual artifacts may occur for image blocks with high frequency components. In this paper, we present a multimode-multilevel BTC (MBTC) technique that improves performance while maintaining simplicity. To improve the visual quality, we uniquely determine the quantization level and coding mode of each block according to the distribution of the luminance and chrominance amplitudes. For a compression ratio of 6:1, the proposed method demonstrates higher coding efficiency and overdrive performance by up to 3.81 dB in the PSNR compared to other methods.

A new sustain driving circuit, featuring an energy-recovering function with simple structure and minimal component count, is proposed as a cost-effective solution for driving plasma display panels during the sustaining period. Compared with existing solutions, the proposed circuit reduces the number of semiconductor switches and reactive circuit components without compromising the circuit performance and gas-discharging characteristics. In addition, the proposed circuit utilizes the harness wire as an inductive circuit component, thereby further simplifying the circuit structure. The performance of the proposed circuit is confirmed with a 42-inch plasma display panel.

This paper introduces a new dynamic 3D mesh representation that provides 3D animation support of progressive display and drastically reduces the amount of storage space required for 3D animation. The primary purpose of progressive display is to allow viewers to get animation as quickly as possible, rather than having to wait until all data has been downloaded. In other words, this method allows for the simultaneous transmission and playing of 3D animation. Experiments show that coarser 3D animation could be reconstructed with as little as 150 KB of data transferred. Using the sustained transmission of refined operators, viewers feel that resolution approaches that of the original animation. The methods used in this study are based on a compression technique commonly used in 3D animation - clustered principle component analysis, using the linearly independent rules of principle components, so that animation can be stored using smaller amounts of data. This method can be coupled with streaming technology to reconstruct animation through iterative updating. Each principle component is a portion of the streaming data to be stored and transmitted after compression, as well as a refined operator during the animation update process. This paper considers errors and rate-distortion optimization, and introduces weighted progressive transmitting (WPT), using refined sequences from optimized principle components, so that each refinement yields an increase in quality. In other words, with identical data size, this method allows each principle component to reduce allowable error and provide the highest quality 3D animation.

The address discharge characteristics formed when an address pulse is applied in AC plasma display panels are investigated by changing the ramp-down voltage during the reset period. The address discharge time lag can be reduced when the difference between the ramp-down voltage and the scan-low voltage is set at a high value during the ramp-down period because the loss of the wall charges accumulated between the scan (Y) and address (A) electrodes during the reset period is minimized. In addition, the voltage applied to the X electrode during the ramp-down period can prevent the voltage margin from reduction even though applying high voltage difference on the Y electrodes.

Recently enhancing the visual experience of the user has been a new trend for TV displays. This trend comes from the fact that changes of ambient illuminations while viewing a Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) significantly affect human impressions. However, psychological effects caused by the combination of displayed video image and ambient illuminations have not been investigated. In the present research, we clarify the relationship between ambient illuminations and psychological effects while viewing video image displayed on the LCD by using a questionnaire based semantic differential (SD) method and a factor analysis method. Six kinds of video images were displayed under different colors and layouts of illumination conditions and rated by 15 observers. According to the analysis, it became clear that the illumination control around the LCD with displayed video image, the feeling of 'activity' and 'evaluating' were rated higher than the feeling of fluorescent ceiling condition. In particular, simultaneous illumination control around the display and the ceiling enhanced the feeling of 'activity,' and 'evaluating' with keeping 'comfort.' Moreover, the feeling of 'activity' under the illumination control around the LCD and the ceiling condition while viewing music video image was rated clearly higher than that with natural scene video image.

The Firing Squad Synchronization Problem (FSSP), one of the most well-known problems related to cellular automata, was originally proposed by Myhill in 1957 and became famous through the work of Moore [1]. The first solution to this problem was given by Minsky and McCarthy [2] and a minimal time solution was given by Goto [3]. A significant amount of research has also dealt with variants of this problem. In this paper, from a theoretical interest, we will extend this problem to number patterns on a seven-segment display. Some of these problems can be generalized as the FSSP for some special trees called segment trees. The FSSP for segment trees can be reduced to a FSSP for a one-dimensional array divided evenly by joint cells that we call segment array. We will give algorithms to solve the FSSPs for this segment array and other number patterns, respectively. Moreover, we will clarify the minimal time to solve these problems and show that there exists no such solution.

We succeeded to develop a reference light source in the range of very low luminance using a double integrating sphere system, and calibrated a commercial spectrophotometer below 110-5 cd/m2 levels, which is 1/100 lower than the specified limit for measurement. And we improved measurements in the ultra low luminance range of displays using the calibrated commercial spectrophotometer and a dark sphere to suppress the influence of the surround.

This manuscript introduces a pointing interface for a tabletop display with a reflex in eye-hand coordination. The reflex is a natural response to inconsistency between kinetic information of a mouse and visual feedback of the mouse cursor. The reflex yields information on which side the user sees the screen from, so that the screen coordinates are aligned with the user's position.

For tactile feedback in mobile devices, the size and the power consumption of tactile modules are the dominant factors. Thus, vibration motors have been widely used in mobile devices to provide tactile sensation. However, the vibration motor cannot sufficiently generate a great amount of tactile sensation because the magnitude and the frequency of the vibration motor are coupled. For the generation of a wide variety of tactile sensations, this paper presents a new tactile actuator that incorporates a solenoid, a permanent magnet and an elastic spring. The feedback force in this actuator is generated by elastic and electromagnetic force. This paper also proposes a tiny tactile module with the proposed actuators. To construct a tiny tactile module, the contactor gap of the module is minimized without decreasing the contactor stroke, the output force, and the working frequency. The elastic springs of the actuators are separated into several layers to minimize the contactor gap without decreasing the performance of the tactile module. Experiments were conducted to investigate each contactor output force as well as the frequency response of the proposed tactile module. Each contactor of the tactile module can generate enough output force to stimulate human mechanoreceptors. As the contactors are actuated in a wide range of frequency, the proposed tactile module can generate various tactile sensations. Moreover, the size of the proposed tactile module is small enough to be embedded it into a mobile device, and its power consumption is low. Therefore, the proposed tactile actuator and module have good potential in many interactive mobile devices.

The tiled-display system has been used as a Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) environment, in which multiple local (and/or remote) participants cooperate using some shared applications whose outputs are displayed on a large-scale and high-resolution tiled-display, which is controlled by a cluster of PC's, one PC per display. In order to make the collaboration effective, each remote participant should be aware of all CSCW activities on the titled display system in real-time. This paper presents a capturing and delivering mechanism of all activities on titled-display system to remote participants in real-time. In the proposed mechanism, the screen images of all PC's are periodically captured and delivered to the Merging Server that maintains separate buffers to store the captured images from the PCs. The mechanism selects one tile image from each buffer, merges the images to make a screen shot of the whole tiled-display, clips a Region of Interest (ROI), compresses and streams it to remote participants in real-time. A technical challenge in the proposed mechanism is how to select a set of tile images, one from each buffer, for merging so that the tile images displayed at the same time on the tiled-display can be properly merged together. This paper presents three selection algorithms; a sequential selection algorithm, a capturing time based algorithm, and a capturing time and visual consistency based algorithm. It also proposes a mechanism of providing several virtual cameras on tiled-display system to remote participants by concurrently clipping several different ROI's from the same merged tiled-display images, and delivering them after compressing with video encoders requested by the remote participants. By interactively changing and resizing his/her own ROI, a remote participant can check the activities on the tiled-display effectively. Experiments on a 32 tiled-display system show that the proposed merging algorithm can build a tiled-display image stream synchronously, and the ROI-based clipping and delivering mechanism can provide individual views on the tiled-display system to multiple remote participants in real-time.