We had a whistle stop tour around the exhibition area at Minatec and we spent most time with Aledia. We wrote this up in a recent Display Daily (Aledia Uses Nanowires for MicroLEDs)
We started in the medical area and we heard that Leti’s work is around three topics – medicine that is
- Personalised
- Protective
- Preventive
Technologies are developed around prevention, diagnosis and therapy. The development of health technology really comes under the ‘IoT’ initiatives in Leti. One of the big issues in medicine is security of the technology and in response to questions, researchers told us that they are working with specialists to ensure that all the medical developments are secure. One of the areas where there is a lot of work is on the development of diagnostics at home or at the point of care and also the development of therapies. Diabetes is a key area of work and Leti is developing systems for adjusting insulin delivery without injections, and with dosage decided every five minutes. Effectively, this is a kind of ‘artificial pancreas’ and the results of 2016 trials from 40 patients have been very successful in showing fewer problems using the system compared to standardised testing and injections. The project is called Diabeloop (which sounds develish to us!).
You can find a video with more information below (in French)
Leti also sees an interest in ‘cyber physical’ systems that join the computing and physical world using sensors.
LED is a big area of interest and an area that is being developed is in communication via light (i.e. Li-fi). The institute is also working on a very bright GaN LED array for automotive. The array is addressable at a segment or pixel level, which means that it can be used for ‘glare-free’ headlamps and can be used to provide very sharp edges between the light and shadow areas of the beam. The group is working on calculating the shape of the beam to optimise the reduction of glare.
The institute has been developing displays from FED over many years, to OLEDs and also microOLEDs. The group told us that it has worked with companies including eMagin (and told us that it had rejected a request for collaboration from Kopin and thought that Kopin was only in LCOS. Clearly, they should be subscribing to our newsletters so that they know that Kopin is now in microOLED!). MicroOLED BHT is a spin-off from Leti that is making microOLEDs in Grenoble and we heard that they are providing devices for the Zeiss Cinemizer glasses.
We also looked at a new transparent film for HUDs and other applications which need to show a projected image on to transparent surfaces. The film has transparency of around 80% to 85% at the moment and at the event, as well as the demonstration, the group had fitted the film to a tractor screen, although we didn’t get a chance to look at that. The group at Leti is looking for partners to develop the project for commercialisation.
LETI has developed this transparent HUD film and is looking for partners. Image:Meko
