China News Service, Haikou, November 13 (Reporter Wang Xiaobin) A technology called "diffraction optical waveguide" is changing the way of viewing cultural relics in Chinese museums. Reporters saw at the 11th China Museum and Related Products and Technology Expo (hereinafter referred to as the "Expo") that opened on the 13th that this "magic light" technology has been deeply integrated with the cultural museum scene - the audience can choose to wear AI glasses to watch the cultural relics explanation, or they can wear nothing and watch the three-dimensional image suspended in a piece of transparent glass.
According to experts, the principle of diffractive optical waveguides can be summarized in one sentence: light will "bend" in thin glass or lenses engraved with nanoscale gratings, be "guided" to propagate along a designed path, and finally be emitted at the desired location. Products are divided into two categories depending on the position of the projection: one is near-eye display, in which the image light is coupled into the pupil through a waveguide, and a layer of interactive virtual images is superimposed in front of the eyes to make AI glasses; the other is spatial imaging, in which light is concentrated in the free space in front of the screen to form an image, and the audience can view the suspended image with the naked eye as if it were a real object, forming a transparent light field screen.
The Rokid Entertainment Industry Edition full-color AI glasses displayed at the Expo weighed 55 grams. They were connected with experience content in scenes such as Hainan Qilou Old Street, Hainan Science and Technology Museum, and Hainan Nanmen Night Market, and supported AI explanations, AI Q&A, intelligent tours, and multilingual explanations. According to the staff of Lingban Technology (Hangzhou) Co., Ltd., this pair of glasses can provide personalized route suggestions based on time, location and travel preferences, and provide tourists with explanations and interactive Q&A in up to 13 languages.
The enabling value of AI glasses in museums has already been demonstrated in actual operations. In June 2026, Liangzhu Museum launched an AI glasses smart guide for the whole museum. When the audience stops in front of the jade cong, the glasses automatically trigger the explanation; press and hold the temple leg to ask "What function does it have in Liangzhu culture?" The glasses give the answer in front of their eyes, and superimpose the graphic and text representation of the jade cong's "inner circle and outer square" in the field of view. According to data disclosed by Lingban Technology, its AI+AR smart glasses have covered more than 200 museums and more than 150 ancient town scenic spots, receiving a total of 5 million tourists, and the average experience time per person exceeded 90 minutes.
If AI glasses are one-to-one personalized tours, transparent light field screens are one-to-many collective viewing. The audience does not wear any equipment. A group of people standing in the same position can see the three-dimensional image suspended in mid-air at the same time, and the real landscape behind them is not blocked. At the Expo site, staff from Suzhou Sudavige Technology Group Co., Ltd. told reporters that this set of transparent screens based on the light control technology of large-format nano-light field screens makes the image appear to be suspended in mid-air more than ten meters away. The picture is so clear that no pixel particles can be seen.
The floor-to-ceiling sample of the transparent light field screen is the "Future Pavilion" of Suzhou Silk Museum. The installation is located in front of a floor-to-ceiling window. Outside the window is the real scene of the thousand-year-old North Temple Pagoda. A mulberry-picking girl in ancient costume is suspended in the screen to dynamically demonstrate picking mulberry and making silk. The thousand-year-old ancient pagoda is overlapped with the three-dimensional image. This "cross-media virtual and real overlay display system for digital twins of cultural relics" was selected as a typical audio-visual system case in 2025 announced by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other five departments. In September 2026, Sudavige cooperated with the Suzhou Imperial Kiln Brick Museum to present the excavation process of the Yuanhetang ancient kiln ruins and the traditional brick firing process in a three-dimensional dynamic form suspended above the physical sand table. The audience can overlook the overall pattern of the ancient kiln community with the naked eye.
