According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) , Approximately 12 million people 40 years and over in the United States have vision impairment, including 1 million who are blind, 3 million who have vision impairment after correction, and 8 million who have vision impairment due to uncorrected refractive error.
"Vision loss causes a substantial social and economic toll for millions of people including significant suffering, disability, loss of productivity, and diminished quality of life."
Common vision conditions include nearsightedness (myopia), farsightedness (hyperopia) and #presbyopia, a gradual, age-related loss of the eyes' ability to focus actively on nearby objects, is almost a guarantee in life. This vision loss plagues most of us starting about the mid-forties, as the lenses in our eyes lose the elasticity needed to focus on nearby objects.
For some reading glasses are sufficient to overcome the difficulty, but for many the only remedy, short of surgery, is to wear progressive lenses.
When I think of smart glasses, the words ‘augmented reality (AR)’ automatically come to mind. They are essentially computer running in the eyewear that add information alongside or to what the wearer sees. Aside from a range of AR smart glasses makers, Bose, a prominent audio equipment provider, offers AR-compatible sunglasses that have built-in acoustic features. It’s clear that there isn’t a lack of imagination by companies who wishes to capitalize on advanced eyewear solutions.
But rather than going into smart glasses used in #AR, virtual reality (#VR) , or mixed reality (MR), why not bring them closer to the fundamentals and explore how technical advancements made to traditional eye wear can help people’s lives on a more personal level, such as improving their visual acuity.
Leave it to the Academia to Come up with Practical Solutions
Funded by major corporations and special grants, a #smartglasses prototype has been created. These come with liquid-based lenses that can automatically adjust the focus on what a person is seeing, whether it is far away or close up.
A team led by Gordon Wetzstein, Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, and graduate student Nitish Padmanaban, have created a smart glasses prototype for 'autofocals' designed to restore proper vision in people who would ordinarily need progressive lenses.
Padmanaban explains the significance of the eye-tracking hardware and system software for guiding the smart glasses autofocus lenses.
The ‘autofocals’ prototype works much like the lens of the eye, with fluid-filled lenses that bulge and thin as the field of vision changes. It also includes eye-tracking sensors that triangulate where a person is looking and determine the precise distance to the object of interest. The Stanford team did not invent these lenses or eye-trackers, but they did develop the software system that harnesses this eye-tracking data to keep the fluid-filled lenses in constant and perfect focus.
Seeing is Believing - Autofocal Glasses are Only an Arm’s Reach Away
What inspired the researchers at Wetzstein's lab is the emphasis on transformative technologies such as vision systems for virtual and augmented reality and that’s where they became aware of the new autofocus lenses, eye-tracking features and added insight to combine these elements to create the autofocals glasses.
Their next hurdle will be to downsize the technology and develop autofocal glasses that are lightweight, energy efficient and stylish. Wetzstein thinks it may take a few years to achieve such goals but he is convinced that autofocals are the future of vision correction.
"This technology could affect billions of people's lives in a meaningful way that most techno-gadgets never will," he said.
That's quite an eye-opener, wouldn't you say?
Information and material courtesy of ScienceDaily and Science Advances.
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