Google Glass didn’t take off as expected, but – let’s be honest – do you really want to walk around with that hardware?The BBC recently reported on Mojo, a company developing smart contact lenses that not only correct vision but also display a display.You can watch videos from CNET on the technologies below.
The lenses feature tiny LED displays, smart sensors, and solid-state batteries similar to those found in pacemakers.According to the BBC article, the company claims to have a “fully functional prototype” and will begin testing.We imagine you can’t cram too many batteries into contact lenses, but presumably that’s one of the things that makes developing this technology so difficult.
The article also mentions other smart contactors in development, including a lens from the University of Surrey, which can monitor eye health using various sensors integrated into the lens.You have to wonder how this would look like in real life.Presumably, the display is off and you can’t see anything, but it’s annoying to have your phone beeping constantly without getting messages all the time in your line of sight.
Of course, this appears to be an upcoming technology.If not this time, then sometime in the future.While we generally think the hacker community should take the lead, we’re not sure we want to hack something that hits people’s eyes.However, not everyone can say that.For us, we’ll stick with headphones.
I think it will be like “blink and you’ll miss it” due to limited battery capacity
Probably just put a coil in some eyeglass frames and use it for beam power and near field high speed data.I don’t think id want a battery, especially a Li-ion battery, I think a supercapacitor as a power buffer might be a better choice.
Smart Contact Lens
Until then, why not put everything, the monitor and everything in the glasses?It will be less invasive than contact lenses.
This is possible when the glasses generate the necessary light field (hint CREAL, e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQUtCLRPs-U)
Glasses-mounted displays require higher resolutions to achieve the resolutions required for contact-lens-mounted displays, because contact-lens-mounted pixels are always directly in the wearer’s field of view.With glasses-mounted displays, you either get high resolution in a small eye box, or a large eye box with reduced resolution.Simulates the fovea, tracks the eye and renders these parts within the FOV with higher detail than the periphery, which allows for reasonable accommodation in stretched screen arrangements with reduced resolution at large FOVs, but not as much as eye tracking and contact can. Work done on a par with lens mounted monitors.This combination not only enables a durable display, but can virtually expand to cover the wearer’s entire potential FOV.Of course, this is all assuming that the display resolution of contact lenses can be as high as conventional display technology…which may be a bit off…but the future is so bright, even if you have to wear contact lenses and sunglasses!
I read about this in the 90′s that some companies made contact lenses with AR screens for divers.The control panel is mounted on the lower arm.They’ve been silent for decades, and now it seems like a new invention.When companies like this remain silent, it usually means the Defense Department has snapped up them.
If you’re using a triboelectric generator to charge your battery, blinking is exactly how you won’t miss it.
Jose!Damn good, getting more advanced and faster, QM re micro LEDs have come a long way…I’ll have to take a closer look and hopefully I’ll hear improvements too 
Thanks for posting,
Forget the camera, you don’t need it.But linking this technology to my phone just gives me a heads-up display that shows directions, the aforementioned boarding information, etc.
And just keep the display simple so it doesn’t block your view…yes, I think you need a driving mode that’s either off or really out of the way so that it doesn’t block your view.
I see video games as my inspiration for always-on AR.Just as the always-on internet connection has transformed modern society.
Alternatively, we can take full advantage of augmented reality and fully integrate with your car’s existing sensor network.After all, what could go wrong?
For contact lens-embedded displays, you need to cover the foveal area (about a 2° circle), but no matter where you look, the display locks into that area.The vision system will “fill in” the peripheral image based on the area you’ve seen before (but only if the eye is tracked accurately!) to provide a full field of view image coverage.The hard part is getting the display to focus (image at infinity, the display panel on the surface of the eye), accurate and fast eye tracking, and not blocking normal vision.
For glasses, your entire display needs to cover the entire desired field of view, which is a huge challenge with current optics.Holographic waveguides extend the limits of materials with almost 40° diagonal coverage.Birdbath optics (like those collimated displays that use flight simulators but are strapped to your head) are huge by comparison, but at least they work.You also need to top render the whole scene, not just a small part of it, which increases the computational load.
Currently, neither solution is ready for prime time.AR today is in the same position as VR in the boom of the 90s: we know what we need to achieve, we know what the solution should look like, but we don’t yet have the ability to actually do it.
Full multispectral “X-ray” specification?Does the front have a crazy pattern from a comic book?
The version without the cam might be more acceptable.I already don’t like that every phone has a camera these days, so we’re already surrounded by phone holes?
At least they won’t record as permanently as body cams, but I think we should take it easy when it comes to cameras in our everyday lives.
Smart Contact Lens
Yes, we are.However, I don’t think we should stop having more cameras, not only because we can, but because this is the next step in the information age.Dashcams are useful, why can’t we record what we’ve already seen?Sure, it can be abused, but we’re not short of ways to abuse the camera, even without a glass hole around it.
2.5 Modification: The right to keep and carry the camera.The least *accidental* rollover shots will go down.
@Ostracus, I know how we can compare, but what I’m thinking is that if the smartwatch is the phone on the arm and the smartglasses are the phone on the head: not so much to record a crime as to easily record what you would take out your phone recording
I like cameras in public places.People tend to behave better if they know the behavior they are caught is likely to be shared.Not many people want to be national news or the next viral video.There will be some people who, though, want that kind of attention.However, for crimes, it is a good option for them to be caught, prosecuted and convicted based on the video.The possibility of getting away with breaking the law has encouraged many.Cameras are a big deterrent.Some places don’t belong to the camera.The use of pictures and videos should be slightly standardized.Public, meaning no privacy, but should not allow people to profit without consent.
They use solid-state batteries, which are also used in pacemakers.Also solid state batteries will not leak or explode.A battery you can expect to use inside someone’s body is already subject to very strict safety regulations.
From the video or from their website it’s not clear how the optics work.Eyes focus on distant objects.To have an image source on the surface of the eyeball requires the optics at that location to do two things: 1. It must have its own optics to produce a virtual image at a distance where the eyeball can focus.This requires a significant distance between the lens and the light source (image) source and the lens element.It’s hard to see how they do this in the sub-millimeter range of contact lens thickness.2. The optical element that produces the image, virtual or not, must face the field of view: a physically large element must intercept the field of view, even if the element is translucent.How did they do it here?
Do the light emitting elements really transmit from the sides and reflect off the curved front surface of the device?
You still need some kind of optics for beamforming.And scans, if you do (though they almost certainly don’t scan anything physical)
As far as I know, it’s more like a laser array than an LED screen array.The image is a light that has been collimated – projected directly on the retina.
You still need optics: with or without a laser, you first need to collimate the light, and second, point it in the right direction: each light source point must map to a different point on the retina.This *requires* some kind of optics.Tiny, holographic, it needs *something* anyway.
The question is what kind of magic did they do to make it so thin.If undisclosed magic isn’t real, it’s fraud.
(And, no, lasers are not naturally collimated, especially small chip-sized lasers. Remove the lens from the laser pointer and see how wide the beam is usually.)
I want to know the same thing.Cramming these optics into a contact lens seems more impressive than its power-wise.
Post time: Jun-27-2022
