Star Wars and Ironman brought the concept of augmented reality(AR) to the public. In 2012, Google released the google glass and failed. Afterwards, the market is waiting for a better application of augmented reality. In this paper, a new application, a smart diving mask with augmented reality is proposed. There are multiple benefits to integrate augmented reality to scuba diving.

First, Google glass was targeting a daily life situation where users did not have need to monitor information constantly. On the other hand, scuba divers always have vital data to monitor and augmented reality can greatly assist divers. Second, scuba divers are high income individual that have high purchasing power. By setting a higher price, a few hundred units’ sales can cover the research and deve...[ Read more ]

Star Wars and Ironman brought the concept of augmented reality(AR) to the public. In 2012, Google released the google glass and failed. Afterwards, the market is waiting for a better application of augmented reality. In this paper, a new application, a smart diving mask with augmented reality is proposed. There are multiple benefits to integrate augmented reality to scuba diving.

First, Google glass was targeting a daily life situation where users did not have need to monitor information constantly. On the other hand, scuba divers always have vital data to monitor and augmented reality can greatly assist divers. Second, scuba divers are high income individual that have high purchasing power. By setting a higher price, a few hundred units’ sales can cover the research and development cost of the product. Third, the scuba diving equipment market is around 2.7 billion US dollars, which is a prefect beachhead market for startup since tech giant is not likely to compete in this market. Finally, a AR diving mask can improve convenience and safety of scuba divers.

In this thesis, multiple optical designs are proposed and tested. A final design was accomplished which has low manufacturing cost, reasonable field of view and form factor. A smart diving mask prototype was built and went through pool testing, pressure chamber testing (50 meters) and ocean testing. Future business development plan was documented in this thesis. A Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) was filed on 13 August 2018.