Kopin to Supply Army Weapon Sight Displays

Kopin Corp. of Taunton, Mass., announced that its new CyberDisplay 640M LVR (low-voltage reconnect) display will be used in the US Army's new thermal weapon sight program, the TWS Bridge, which the company said has potential volume exceeding 150,000 units. The display is designed to operate at temperatures as low as -40 °C with nearly "instant-on" capability -- an unprecedented achievement for LCDs, Kopin said -- without the need for an external heater. President and CEO John Fan, PhD, said, "Our design team was inspired by a challenge from our major Department of Defense (DOD) equipment suppliers to develop a display system capable of operating at extremely low temperatures with unsurpassed power efficiency. Our innovative display solution not only meets the needs of the TWS Bridge product, but will likely be adopted across a broad range of DOD applications." The CyberDisplay, with VGA (640 x 480) resolution, combines two of Kopin's inventions: low-voltage architecture, which reduces active-matrix LCD (AMLCD) video levels by 50 percent, and "Vcom thin-film," a dual-purpose active matrix and heating element. The complete display system dissipates less than 130 mW during normal video-rate operation. Volume production of the CyberDisplay 640M LVR, which was tested earlier this year, is expected to being in early 2008. Kopin said work is also underway to incorporate its "instant-on" technology into full-color displays with resolutions up to 1280 x 1024, and that it will make the technology available in its full line of military displays by the end of next year.