Laser Displays and Lighting

I recently got details of a display meeting that should be of interest to readers, but is not often covered in the press. The Optical Society of Japan (OSJ) hosted the 6^th Laser Display and Lighting Conference (LDC ’17) earlier this year and plans on hosting the 7^th conference, LDC ’18,, on Tuesday April 24 through Friday April 27, 2018.

This conference will be located at the Pacifico Yokohama convention complex in Yokohama, Japan. It is part of the OSJ Optics & Photonics International Congress 2018 (OPIC ’18), which will be co-located in turn with the Optics & Photonics International Exhibition (OPIE ’18)

Attendees at LDC ’17 in Yokohama in April, 2017 (Credit: LDC ’17)

LDC ’18 will be an international conference on laser displays, laser lighting, and related technologies. The 1^st, 2^nd, 4^th, 6^th LDCs were all held in Yokohama, Japan in 2012, 2013, 2015, 2017 respectively. The 3^rd was in Taichung, Taiwan in 2014 and the 5^th was in Jena, Germany in 2016.

LDC Logo

LDC ‘18 is intended to provide a central forum for the update and review of scientific and technical information on laser display and lighting covering a wide range of fields from fundamental research to systems and applications. The conference will be sponsored by the OSJ in cooperation with several other academic societies and associations.

LDC 2015 – 2017 Attendance by Country (Credit LDC)

LDC Co-Chairs are Kazuo Kuroda (Utsunomiya University) and Hiroshi Murata (Osaka University). Program committee co-chairs are Shevlin Fergal (Dyoptyka), Sunao Kurimurac (National Institute for Materials Science), Tetsuya Yagi (Mitsubishi Electric) and Shining Zhu (Nanjing University).

It was actually Fergal Shevlin who brought LDC ’17 and ’18 to my attention. One of his goals is to increase participation in this conference from North America, Europe and other areas outside Asia. The deadline for submitting technical papers to LDC will be 14 December 2017. For additional information about submitting a paper to LDC ‘18, contact Yuko Tsutsumi at OPIC or Fergal Shevlin.

Papers in six key areas are desired:

1. Lasers and light sources, including visible lasers, LEDs, solid-state light sources, phosphors, fluorescent materials, wavelength conversion materials and optoelectronic materials.
2. Optical components including spatial light modulators, high-speed scanners, MEMS, active-matrix integration, projection components, display drivers and interfaces.
3. Imaging & lighting technologies and devices including projectors, 3D imaging, holography, head-worn and eyewear displays and laser backlight units.
4. Image & lighting quality and human vision including speckle, color speckle, image quality evaluation, color reproduction, color management, color appearance and eye and laser safety.
5. Systems and applications including projection TV and other projectors, LCDs, 3D, head-mounted and eyewear displays, lighting technology, touch technology, biomedical imaging, industrial imaging, laser entertainment, AR, VR, MR, XR and wearables.
6. Novel and emerging technologies related to other LDC topics.

LDC ’18 will have a special session for 3D plus an additional special session for Automotive is under consideration. At LDC ’17 there were 46 technical papers in 9 sessions, including 11 papers in the poster session and six papers in the LDC and LEDIA (Light-Emitting Devices and Their Industrial Applications) Joint Session. Of these six papers, four were about high-power InGaN lasers and LEDs, one was about holographic displays and one was about projection mapping. While most of the papers at LDC ’17 were technical in nature, Shigeki Okauchi and Atsutomo Hama of Nichia Corporation presented a paper titled “The initiatives of market direction and activation of the Gallium Nitride based Laser Diode for Laser Display” that gave their (i.e. Nichia’s) view of the future of lasers for displays. Only three papers on LDC ’17 program were dedicated to laser lighting and the rest were either on laser/LED technology or on laser display systems.

While held in Japan, OPIC and OPIE are both already international events similar to Photonics West (the SPIE is an international partner of the OPIC and OPIE). OPIC ’17 had 1012 participants, with 37% of them from outside Japan. The top 10 countries at OPIC ’17 were Japan (641), P. R. China (59), Taiwan (52), USA (42), Korea (42), Germany (37), France (18), UK (12), Romania (9) and Russia (7).

351 companies and organizations participated in the exhibition, OPIE ‘17, including direct overseas exhibitions from 11 countries and 47 companies. The total number of the attendees at OPIE ‘17 over the exhibition’s 3 days was 15,214.

Schedule overview for OPIC & OPIE ’17. The equivalent schedule for OPIC ’18 has not been announced yet. (Credit: OPIC ’17)

OPIC ’18 will consist of 14 conferences, including LDC ’18. In addition to LDC ’18, several of these conferences are likely to be of interest to Display Daily readers. For example, LEDIA ’18, which will focus on light sources and their applications, especially in industry. At OPIC ’17, LDC and LEDIA had a joint session before breaking down into the separate conferences for two additional days.

Another conference at OPIC ’18 likely to be of interest to Display Daily readers is IoT ’18, which will focus on the Internet of Things. Its official website says “This IoT Conference covers multiple aspects of IoT, from sensing, wireless and optical M2M communications and networks, and Big Data analysis through artificial intelligence (AI) via cloud computing, in addition to the photonic technology relevant to the sensing and communications. It also focuses on the real-world use cases of IoT in manufacturing, self-driving vehicles, healthcare, security, urban infrastructure, agriculture etc.”

Meko will have a complete report on LDC ’17 in upcoming issues of Large Display Monitor and Mobile Display Monitor (Subscription required) –Matthew Brennesholtz