Design of head-mounted binoculars utilizing freeform surfaces

Sandia has designed and prototyped a monocular for the use in a head-mounted system. The all-reflective design approach utilized freeform and aspheric surfaces to surpass the performance available from more conventional reflective designs. The prototyped design demonstrated and validated the design approach, mirror fabrication process, and alignment of the system. The system exhibited a magnification of 6.6 × , a field-of-view of 4.5 deg, and an excellent image quality.