Light Prescriptions Innovators, LLC Patent applications |
Patent application number | Title | Published |
20130194811 | SHELL INTEGRATOR - A luminaire has a light source and a shell integrator. The shell integrator has a transparent dome over the light source, with inner and outer surfaces formed as arrays of lenslets. Each lenslet of the inner surface images the light source onto a respective lenslet of the outer surface, and each lenslet of the outer surface images the respective lenslet of the inner surface as a virtual image onto the light source. The dome may be substantially hemispherical. The light source and the integrator may be at an input of a collimator. | 08-01-2013 |
20130120849 | OPTICAL PHASE SPACE COMBINER - An optical component called the Phase Space Combiner (PSC) is designed to join several bundles of rays. The bundles of rays, when represented in ray phase-space, occupy non-connected regions before passing through the PSC, while their representation in ray phase space occupies a single simply connected region (without holes) after passing through the PSC. Obviously, when used in reverse way it splits one bundle in several parts. We present herein the idea of using Multiple Individual Optics, MIO, not for collimating the light from the LEDs but as a PSC. Then a Single Common Optics, SCO, which can be an optical train, is used to get the desired intensity pattern. This hybrid SCO and MIO strategy combines most of the advantages of both approaches. | 05-16-2013 |
20130057140 | LED LIGHT BULB WITH TRANSLUCENT SPHERICAL DIFFUSER AND REMOTE PHOSPHOR THEREUPON - An LED lamp is disclosed comprising a remote phosphor patch on or near the interior surface of a translucent sphere. The phosphor is illuminated by an adjacent light box containing blue LEDs, located within the lamp below the transmissive phosphor patch or alternatively above a reflective phosphor patch. The reflective patch can be either fully or partially populated with phosphor. Below the light box is an electronics bay, and below that is an Edison screw-in base. | 03-07-2013 |
20120287511 | OFF-AXIS COLLIMATION OPTICS - A light funnel collimator has a central lens surface and a back reflecting surface, shaped to provide a wider back-ground beam and a narrower hotspot beam within but off-center of the wider beam. One of the beams is on-axis of the collimator, and the other beam is off-axis. The reflector is at least partly asymmetrical relative to the axis, and provides or contributes to the off-axis beam. | 11-15-2012 |
20120194781 | AUTOFOCUSING EYEWEAR, ESPECIALLY FOR PRESBYOPIA CORRECTION - A pair of eyewear has transparent waveguides in each eyewear lens. An illumination subsystem directs a beam of light through the waveguides onto a wearer's eyes. A First Purkinje point imaging subsystem for each lens uses light reflected from the eyes through the waveguides. A controller calculates from the positions of the First Purkinje points the wearer's gaze parallax angle and/or the distance to an object of interest on which the gaze of the wearer's eyes converges. The output of the controller may drive variable-focus eyeglass lenses to enable a presbyopic wearer to focus on the object. Modified Alvarez variable-focus lenses are described. | 08-02-2012 |
20120113537 | REFLECTORS MADE OF LINEAR GROOVES - An embodiment of a method of designing a grooved reflector comprises selecting two given wavefronts; and designing two surfaces meeting at an edge to form a groove such that the rays of each of the given wavefront become rays of a respective one of the given wavefronts after a reflection at each of the surfaces. Multiple grooves may be combined to form a mirror covering a desired area. A mirror may be manufactured according to the design. | 05-10-2012 |
20110261193 | PASSIVE ELECTRO-OPTICAL TRACKER - A passive electro-optical tracker uses a two-band IR intensity ratio to discriminate high-speed projectiles and obtain a time-varying speed estimate from their time-varying temperature, as well as determining the trajectory back to the source of fire. In an omnidirectional system a hemispheric imager with an MWIR spectrum splitter forms two CCD images of the environment. Various methods are given to determine the azimuth and range of a projectile, both for clear atmospheric conditions and for nonhomogeneous atmospheric conditions. One approach uses the relative intensity of the image of the projectile on the pixels of a CCD camera to determine the azimuthal angle of trajectory with respect to the ground, and its range. A second uses a least squares optimization over multiple frames based on a triangle representation of the smeared image to yield a real-time trajectory estimate. | 10-27-2011 |
20110203662 | STEPPED FLOW-LINE CONCENTRATORS AND COLLIMATORS - One optical system comprises a first optical surface, a faceted second optical surface, and a faceted third optical surface. The optical system is operative to convert a first bundle of rays that is continuous in phase space outside the first optical surface into a second bundle of rays that is continuous in phase space outside the third optical surface. Between the second and third optical surfaces the rays making up the first and second bundles form discrete sub-bundles each passing from a facet of the second optical surface to a facet of the third optical surface. The sub-bundles do not form a continuous bundle in a phase space that has dimensions representing the position and angle at which rays cross a surface transverse to the bundle of rays. | 08-25-2011 |
20110120539 | ON-WINDOW SOLAR-CELL HEAT-SPREADER - An optoelectrical device, which may be a luminaire or a photovoltaic concentrator, has a transparent cover plate. A target with an optoelectrical transducer that produces waste heat in operation is mounted at an inside face of the transparent cover plate. A primary mirror reflects light between being concentrated on the target and passing generally collimated through the cover plate. A heat spreader is in thermal contact with the target. The heat spreader has heat conductors that thermally connect the target with the inside surface of the cover plate. The heat conductors may be arms extending radially outwards, and may be straight, zigzag, or branching. An array of targets may be mounted on a common cover plate, and their heat spreaders may be continuous from target to target. | 05-26-2011 |
20110096552 | REMOTE PHOSPHOR LIGHT ENGINES AND LAMPS - A light engine has a pillar with first and second ends; a circuit board on the first end of the pillar, a light source mounted on the circuit board encircling the pillar and facing towards the second end of the pillar, and a surface extending from the second end of the pillar, that surface and the exterior of the pillar between that surface and the circuit board being coated with a reflective remote phosphor that is excited by light from the light source. The light engine may be used in a light bulb, with a frosted globe enclosing the circuit board and mounted round the outer edge of the phosphor-coated surface, and an Edison screw or other standard base connected to the second end of the pillar. | 04-28-2011 |
20110095686 | SOLID-STATE LIGHT BULB - An example of this light bulb has a light emitting element (which may be an LED array) mounted on a circuit board. The circuit board is mounted on one end of a heat-conducting frame. An Edison screw or other suitable connector, for attaching the light bulb electrically and mechanically to a receptacle, is mounted on the other end of the frame. A transparent phosphor-coated ball has a flat chord face optically bonded to said array. A light-permeable globular enclosure is mounted on the frame, surrounding the ball and both homogenizing the white light output of the bulb but also concealing the yellowing unlit appearance of the remote phosphor ball centrally located within it. | 04-28-2011 |
20110044000 | TRANSPARENT HEAT-SPREADER FOR OPTOELECTRONIC APPLICATIONS - An optoelectronic cooling system is equally applicable to an LED collimator or a photovoltaic solar concentrator. A transparent fluid conveys heat from the optoelectronic chip to a hollow cover over the system aperture. The cooling system can keep a solar concentrator chip at the same temperature as found for a one-sun flat-plate solar cell. Natural convection or forced circulation can operate to convey heat from the chip to the cover. | 02-24-2011 |
20110032482 | 3D AUTOSTEREOSCOPIC DISPLAY WITH TRUE DEPTH PERCEPTION - An autostereoscopic display provides true natural perception of 3D scenes by projecting depth-slice images of objects located at different distances, so during each video frame the scene is segmented into five or more different depths and then each displayed in succession with both the stereo disparity and apparent image distance proper for each depth. | 02-10-2011 |
20100307586 | REFLECTIVE FREE-FORM KOHLER CONCENTRATOR - One example of a solar photovoltaic concentrator has a primary mirror with multiple free-form panels, each of which forms a Köhler integrator with a respective panel of a lenticular secondary lens. The Köhler integrators are folded by a common intermediate mirror. The resulting plurality of integrators all concentrate sunlight onto a common photovoltaic cell. Luminaires using a similar geometry are also described. | 12-09-2010 |
20100289395 | DIMMABLE LED LAMP - An LED-powered replacement for the conventional incandescent screw-in light bulb comprises a phosphor coated sphere emitting white light into the same spherical pattern as a frosted incandescent bulb. In one embodiment inside the hollow sphere there is a dielectric cone emitting blue light, which causes the phosphor coating to glow. The blue light comes into the cone from a dielectric totally internally reflecting concentrator (DTIRC), which receives light from a conical reflector surrounding an LED array. The array has blue chips for energizing the phosphor and red chips for supplementing the phosphor light, enabling separate electronic control of the color temperature as well as the overall luminosity of the LED Lamp. Both blue and red chips are controlled by a quantum dimmer. | 11-18-2010 |
20100278387 | Passive Electro-Optical Tracker - A passive electro-optical tracker uses a two-band IR intensity ratio to discriminate high-speed projectiles and obtain a speed estimate from their temperature, as well as determining the trajectory back to the source of fire. In an omnidirectional system a hemispheric imager with an MWIR spectrum splitter forms two CCD images of the environment. Three methods are given to determine the azimuth and range of a projectile, one for clear atmospheric conditions and two for nonhomogeneous atmospheric conditions. The first approach uses the relative intensity of the image of the projectile on the pixels of a CCD camera to determine the azimuthal angle of trajectory with respect to the ground, and its range. The second calculates this angle using a different algorithm. The third uses a least squares optimization over multiple frames based on a triangle representation of the smeared image to yield a real-time trajectory estimate. | 11-04-2010 |
20100269885 | PHOTOVOLTAIC DEVICE - Some photovoltaic cells have a front face accepting incoming incident light and opaque gridlines overlying part of the front face, electrically bonded to the face, with upper reflective facets oblique to the plane of the front face and producing outgoing reflected light. An optical interface parallel to and in front of the front face transmits incoming light to the front face and to the gridlines and reflects back towards the front face by total internal reflection at least some of the outgoing reflected light. Some photovoltaic devices have a triple junction photovoltaic cell, a single junction photovoltaic cell, and a reflective surface arranged to distribute incoming light between the cells. The surface may be a frequency-selective mirror that apportions light so when the cells are in series the power produced, and preferably the photocurrent, is greater than if all the light fell on the triple junction cell alone. | 10-28-2010 |
20100181889 | HEAT SINK WITH HELICAL FINS AND ELECTROSTATIC AUGMENTATION - A heat sink for an LED downlight utilizes tilted fins forming helical air passages that can enhance thermal performance by 30% over conventional fins. To overcome the thermal challenge of installation within the stagnant hot air of insulated ceiling cans, a heat sink has an integral electrostatic air pump on its exterior, to move hot air downwards and drain the stagnant air from the can by establishing a chimney-like circulation up through the heat sink and back down around the outside of the heat sink. The air mover can be powered by a compact high-voltage, low-current power supply similar to those of neon signs. An embodiment of the heat sink is also revealed that is suitable for cooling an LED replacement for standard screw-in or equivalent light bulbs. This device can perform well in variety of orientations (horizontal, vertical, etc.) and fixtures. | 07-22-2010 |
20100123954 | KOHLER CONCENTRATOR - One example of a solar voltaic concentrator has a primary Fresnel lens with multiple panels, each of which forms a Köhler integrator with a respective panel of a lenticular secondary lens. The resulting plurality of integrators all concentrate sunlight onto a common photovoltaic cell. Luminaires using a similar geometry are also described. | 05-20-2010 |
20100110676 | Compact Led Downlight with cuspated flux-redistribution lens - A lighting device has a light source, a reflector dish with a central opening facing the light source, and a lens between the light source and the reflector dish. The lens is so arranged that light emitted from the source towards the central opening of the reflector dish is diffracted away from the central opening. The reflector dish is arranged to reflect light received from the source through the lens back past the lens and source. | 05-06-2010 |
20100097002 | Quantum dimming via sequential stepped modulation of led arrays - In one method of and apparatus for varying the luminosity of illumination, each of a plurality of light sources has an on state in which it emits light and an off state in which it does not emit light. Each of the plurality of light sources is switched cyclically between the on state and the off state in a sequence over a cycle period. The switching sequence is selected such that the number of said light sources that are on is uniform over the cycle. The luminosity of the illumination is varied by varying the proportion of each cycle for which each light source is switched on. | 04-22-2010 |
20100038663 | LED LIGHT RECYCLING FOR LUMINANCE ENHANCEMENT AND ANGULAR NARROWING - Some embodiments provide a luminance-enhanced light source. These embodiments include a thin-film LED mounted on a substrate and with a defined upper surface approximately hemispherically emitting light, with the upper surface being diffusely transmissive, a lower first layer of identically defined linear prismatic film separated from the upper surface by a non-evanescent air gap so as to cover the upper surface, a upper second layer of linear prismatic film, identical to but oriented orthogonally to the first layer, and a circumferential vertical reflective wall bordering on both of the first and second layers and extending in height from the substrate to the top of the second layer. | 02-18-2010 |
20100033946 | LED LUMINANCE-ENHANCEMENT AND COLOR-MIXING BY ROTATIONALLY MULTIPLEXED BEAM-COMBINING - The present embodiments provide methods and systems for use in providing enhanced illumination. Some embodiments include at least two light sources and one or more smoothly rotating wheels, where the one or more wheels comprises at least one mirror sector, the circumferential portion of the mirror sector is the inverse of the number of said sources, a first source of the sources is so disposed that the mirror sector reflects light from the first source into a common output path, where the first source pulsing such that a duty cycle of the first source corresponds to a time the mirror sector reflects light from the first source into the common output path. | 02-11-2010 |
20100002320 | Reflectors made of linear grooves - An embodiment of a method of designing a grooved reflector comprises selecting two given wavefronts; and designing two surfaces meeting at an edge to form a groove such that the rays of each of the given wavefront become rays of a respective one of the given wavefronts after a reflection at each of the surfaces. Multiple grooves may be combined to form a mirror covering a desired area. A mirror may be manufactured according to the design. | 01-07-2010 |
20090273918 | Remote-phosphor led downlight - An embodiment of a collimating downlight has front-mounted blue LED chips facing upwards, having a heat sink on the back of the LED chips exposed in ambient air. The LED chips are mounted in a collimator that sends their blue light to a remote phosphor situated near the top of the downlight can. Surrounding the remote phosphor is a downward-facing reflector that forms a beam from its stimulated emission and reflected blue light. The phosphor thickness and composition can be adjusted to give a desired color temperature. | 11-05-2009 |
20090180276 | BRIGHTNESS-ENHANCING FILM - The present embodiments provide systems, backlights, films, apparatuses and methods of generating back lighting. Some embodiments provide backlights that include a cavity with at least one interior light source and diffusely reflecting wall of high reflectivity, a top surface with multiple intermittently spaced holes allowing exit of light generated by the light sources, and external collimators extending from each of the holes such that the external collimators spatially expand and angularly narrow the light exiting the holes. | 07-16-2009 |
20090167651 | ETENDUE-CONSERVING ILLUMINATION-OPTICS FOR BACKLIGHTS AND FRONTLIGHTS - Some embodiments provide luminance-preserving non-imaging backlights that comprise a luminous source emitting light, an input port that receives the light, an injector and a beam-expanding ejector. The injector includes the input port and a larger output port with a profile that expands away from the input port acting via total internal reflection to keep x-y angular width of the source image inversely proportional to its luminance. The injector is defined by a surface of revolution with an axis on the source and a swept profile that is a first portion of an upper half of a CPC tilted by its acceptance angle. The beam-expanding ejector comprising a planar waveguide optically coupled to the output port of the injector. The ejector includes a smooth upper surface, and a reflective lower surface comprising microstructured facets that refract upwardly reflected light into a collimated direction common to the facets. | 07-02-2009 |
20090153808 | Free-form condenser optic - A condenser for directing light from a UHP arc lamp or other generally cylindrical source onto a target such as a microdisplay in line with a front end of the lamp comprises a primary mirror to direct light from the source towards the back end of the condenser, and a secondary mirror at the back end of the condenser to direct the light from the primary mirror onto the target. | 06-18-2009 |
20090116215 | Optical manifold - Optical systems are described that have at least one source of a beam of blue light with divergence under 15°. A phosphor emits yellow light when excited by the blue light. A collimator is disposed with the phosphor and forms a yellow beam with divergence under 15°. A dichroic filter is positioned to transmit the beam of blue light to the phosphor and to reflect the beam of yellow light to an exit aperture. In different embodiments, the beams of blue and yellow light are incident upon said filter with central angles of 15°, 22°, and 45°. The filter may reflect all of one polarization and part of the other polarization, and a polarization rotating retroreflector may then be provided to return the unreflected light to the filter. | 05-07-2009 |
20090116114 | Wideband dichroic-filter design for LED-phosphor beam-combining - A general method is disclosed of designing two-component dichroic short-pass filters operable for incidence angle distributions over the 0-30° range, and specific preferred embodiments are listed. The method is based on computer optimization algorithms for an N-layer design, specifically the N-dimensional conjugate-gradient minimization of a merit function based on difference from a target transmission spectrum, as well as subsequent cycles of needle synthesis for increasing N. A key feature of the method is the initial filter design, upon which the algorithm proceeds to iterate successive design candidates with smaller merit functions. This initial design, with high-index material H and low-index L, is (0.75 H, 0.5 L, 0.75 H)̂m, denoting m (20-30) repetitions of a three-layer motif, giving rise to a filter with N=2m+1. | 05-07-2009 |
20090071467 | MULTI-JUNCTION SOLAR CELLS WITH A HOMOGENIZER SYSTEM AND COUPLED NON-IMAGING LIGHT CONCENTRATOR - The present embodiments provide methods and systems to homogenize illumination on a target. Some embodiments provide rotational symmetric dual-reflector solar concentrators that include a concave primary reflector with an aim-direction directed toward the sun to receive optical radiation in a far-field angle within an angle of acceptance and redirect radiation upward and centrally generating flux concentration, a secondary reflector positioned coaxial with said primary reflector to receive said redirected radiation and redirect radiation downward and centrally generating flux concentration solar rays, and a central target zone receiving said concentrated solar rays, where cross sections of said primary and secondary reflectors both further comprise a multiplicity of segments that establish a correspondence between pairs of segments, each of said segments of said primary reflector such as to image said angle of acceptance onto said corresponding segment of said secondary reflector to image onto said target zone. | 03-19-2009 |
20090067179 | OPTICAL DEVICE FOR LED-BASED LAMP - An optical device for coupling the luminous output of a light-emitting diode (LED) to a predominantly spherical pattern comprises a transfer section that receives the LED's light within it and an ejector positioned adjacent the transfer section to receive light from the transfer section and spread the light generally spherically. A base of the transfer section is optically aligned and/or coupled to the LED so that the LED's light enters the transfer section. The transfer section can comprises a compound elliptic concentrator operating via total internal reflection. The ejector section can have a variety of shapes, and can have diffusive features on its surface as well, including a phosphor coating. The transfer section can in some implementations be polygonal, V-grooved, faceted and other configurations. | 03-12-2009 |
20080316761 | Free-Form Lenticular Optical Elements and Their Application to Condensers and Headlamps - Some embodiments provide an illumination optical system. The optical system can include a first surface and a second surface. Each of the first and second surfaces can further comprises a multiplicity of corresponding Cartesian-oval lenticulations such that each lenticulation of the first surface focuses a source upon a corresponding lenticulation of the second surface and each lenticulation of the second surface focuses a target upon a corresponding lenticulation of the first surface. | 12-25-2008 |
20080291682 | LED luminance-augmentation via specular retroreflection, including collimators that escape the etendue limit - The diffuse reflectivity of an LED source is utilized to recycle some of its emission, thereby enabling a luminaire to escape the étendue limit. Retroreflectors intercept the rays destined for the outer part of the luminaire aperture, which can then be truncated. The resulting smaller aperture has the same beam-width as the full original, albeit with lesser flux due to recycling losses. A reduction to half the original area is possible. | 11-27-2008 |
20080223443 | Optical concentrator, especially for solar photovoltaics - In one embodiment of a solar concentrator, a tailored aspheric lens augments the solar-concentrator performance of a concave mirror, widening its acceptance angle for easier solar tracking, making it more cost-competitive for ultra-large arrays. The molded-glass secondary lens also includes a short rod for reducing the peak concentration on a photovoltaic cell that is optically bonded to the end of the rod. The Simultaneous Multiple Surface method produces lens shapes suitable for a variety of medium and high concentrations by mirrored dishes. Besides the rotationally symmetric parabolic mirror itself, other aspheric deviations therefrom are described, including a free-form rectangular mirror that has its focal region at its edge. | 09-18-2008 |
20080212328 | ETENDUE-SQUEEZING ILLUMINATION OPTICS - In some embodiments, an apparatus for use generating illumination is provided that comprises a reflective base, a first light source positioned proximate the reflective base, and a reimaging reflector positioned partially about the first light source, where a percentage of light emitted from the first light source is reflected from the reimaging reflector to the reflective base adjacent the first light source establishing a first real image. The reimaging reflector can further comprise a first sector of a first ellipsoid and a second sector of a second ellipsoid, where the first and second sectors establish the first and a second real image. Further embodiments provide a lens that includes a reimaging reflector that receives light and reflects the light establishing a first real image. The reimaging reflector can further comprise a plurality of sectors that reflect light to establish first and second real images. | 09-04-2008 |