For the 20 percent of 18 to 34-year-olds who wear contact lenses, high-tech applications will soon be available in a very small form. The Washington-based company Innovega focuses on connecting eyewear with digital media and is currently developing full-color megapixel displays that can be viewed using contact lenses.
The goal of Innovega is to find a way to project complex displays, such as virtual reality and augmented reality, to someone’s eyes without the need to wear bulky headgear such as helmets. This would provide greater convenience and functionality for consumers of many different products, such as cell phones and games. Researchers claim that the displays projected on the lenses have a screen size equal to that of a 240-inch television when viewed from 10 feet away. Also, the contact lenses project a slightly different picture to each eye, which creates the illusion of 3D.
These displays would have a variety of different purposes. Mainly, they could be used in conjunction with mobile devices to give users a better look at the screen. Other applications include watching videos, playing games and creating augmented reality displays, which allow users to view computer-generated images overlaid over the real world.
Innovega researchers also hope that their device will be able to be used by the military. A few specific uses for the contact lenses in a military environment are to assist soldiers who pilot the drones looking for bombs, to help medics who need to get information about injured soldiers quickly and to aid soldiers on the ground that need unobstructed vision but also data and maps of the area.
Medically, these contact lenses could assist people with vision problems such as macular degeneration, which is a disease that compromises the retina’s ability to pick up on details. This disease affects about 10 million people in the United States.
Other researchers have also looked into contact lenses with displays. Scientists at U. Washington conducted research about putting virtual displays into contact lenses back in 2008, but could only manage to project one or two pixels and only for a short amount of time. However, they took a different approach, encapsulating LEDs inside the lens.
Innovega’s main target audience is the 100 million people who already wear contact lenses, particularly those between the ages of 18 and 34. Eventually, the designers hope that users can simply change prescriptions to Innovega’s contact lenses.
However, for those who don’t want to worry about inserting and removing contact lenses every day, researchers also plan to develop lenses that could be directly implanted into customers’ eyes. This would be performed similarly to a cataract operation, where part of the patient’s own lens is replaced with the contact lens. In addition to providing customers with all the displays that would be available on the contact lens, it would also improve the patient’s vision. This process would be useful for the vision-impaired and also for soldiers, who don’t want to have to worry about contact lenses.
The company exhibited the lenses in January at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Los Vegas. Innovega plans to put out the first prototypes of their devices throughout 2012 and 2013. This year, they are also planning to get FDA approval to manufacture the lenses commercially. The first release of the lenses will most likely be in 2014 to the defense community and those with vision problems. Eventually, in 2014 and 2015 Innovega wants to release the lenses to the general public, hopefully after reaching deals with other companies, such as gaming companies.