Rapid automatic alignment of a tiled digital projection system
We have developed a mechanical, optical and digital system based only on commercially available equipment to allow a seamlessly tiled projection display system to be set up and aligned very rapidly. Using a digital camera and motorized projectors, our prototype system can be unpacked, aligned, and put into use within a half-hour. To minimize the number of projectors for a given pixel count, we do not overlap the projected fields and we do not move the images by digital displacement within the projected field. We use motorized lens mounts to displace the images to proper positions for tiling, a method that does not induce keystone distortion. The movement is under control of a digital camera using an image-processing system, making it unnecessary for an operator to control the movement of the lenses.