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Cheap Fast Eyeglasses from a Desktop Fabricator
purduephotog writes "Doctoral candidate Saul Griffith of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and inventor of the Lego powered chocolate printer was awarded the Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for inventing a device that molds eyeglasses rapidly and cheaply. Best of all, he's motivated for the good of humanity."
Griffith's thesis research is actually on "programmable self-assembly, how to make things automatically make things," he said.
:-)
This is the really interesting scientific angle of his work, and based on this, I would say that this small $30k prize is only the beginning for this guy. This approach demonstrates a unique perspective to problem solving that shows how innovative folks like Saul are. But perhaps more importantly for the future of science, science education, and the overall good, he has a social conscience that allowed him to identify a problem that affects people worldwide and has found an innovative solution that does what we all should aspire to do: Make a difference.
And he also makes the rest of us scientists look good.
Good on you Saul.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
... Doctor Saul Griffith of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and inventor of the Lego powered chocolate printer and eyeglass moulder was awarded the Lemelson-MIT Doctoral Prize for inventing a device that cheaply and easily mouldes edible chocolate eyeglasses!
Imagine downloading and printing a new bowl for your food processor, or a new toy for your kid.
Imagine, too, the anguished hand-wringing of corporations over the illegal distribution of copyrighted object designs over the Internet.
Imagine, too, the anguished hand-wringing of governments when the technology reaches a point where you can print parts for an AK-47.
My bet is it's going to be quite the roller-coaster ride when it gets here, and that it's closer than we think...
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
..."in about an hour?"
I'm sure he'll be overjoyed when he graduates, finds himself unemployed and realizes just how much money he could have made and helped the world by patenting his invention and licensing it out.
I was starting to go blind from looking at all the pron on the internet.
thanks to this man, I will now be able to see better, faster and cheaper!
Hmm, a device that can automatically figure out your prescription, and another that can make cheap eyeglasses?
I see these popping up all over the place, like the "check your blood pressure here" devices.
If it means that more people who can't afford vision correction can get glasses, whether in a poor country or not, I'm all for it.
Happiness is like peeing yourself. Everybody can see it but only you can feel its warmth.
I didn't see this one coming...
On machines building machines, obviously starting with the T-100 series
Griffith... imagines that mass-produced dolls could be individualized by giving each a discrete face.
Get the Real Doll [NSFW] people on the phone, stat!
I looked into the abyss, and the abyss looked into me--and we both winked.
If you'd RTFA, you would have noticed that the device is patent-pending.
I could have sworn one optometrist i went to a few years ago had a machine that automatcially brought an image into focus for me. Way cooler than this stone-age notion of looking at the eye chart as the "doctor" flips lenses. Which one is clearer, one or two. Why do we keep doing this stone age crap?
I'm all for automatic vision testing, I feel like my current prescription was issued by a talentless hack.
Automatically testing vision and cranking out lenses is sweet. Next they just need to fire on an AR coating and everyone is good to go.
This sounded like even cooler tech to me. I like the idea of something that takes away the subjectivness of the traditional exam for a prescription. He could even throw a glaucoma tester into the goggles.
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
The pr0n is out of focus again. Time to print off some new glasses.
He does it in about 5-10 minutes.
FTA:
"what a great way to make sure a great invention never makes it big. I predict that in 10 years it will still have less than 5% market share. kind of like linux."
...
As opposed to, say, commercial stuff like Irix, which are
S
and this folks is what being a real team player is all about, in society where we tell our children that greed and selfishness is bad yet buisnesses teach us the exact opposite , that greed is good and if you are not making 500$ a second profit you are failing, these sorts of things dont come round enough, ask yourself why are you here ? to be a wage slave or to make a real difference to peoples lives
A>S
I'm interested in the uses of this machine behind eyeglasses. I've been working on several projects where we are creating instrumentation, and have been surprised to find that optics are both difficult to find in specific diameters and focal lengths, and rather expensive when you do find the optics you need.
While not a big deal to major corporations who don't balk at shelling out $20 a lens for custom work, for academic projects and independant research, that is a significant chunk of the cost of our prototype, considering the ease and realtive low cost involved in obtaining a microcontroller these days.
I imagine that, since he can make eye glasses, producing DCX, PCX, DCV, and PCV lenses would be easy too. I'd love to see this kind of machine available at academic institutions for producing parts for research.
inventor of the Lego powered chocolate printer
I skimmed the paper, searched for Lego, and as it turns out he's really not uses Legos to power his system. It's merely built out of Legos. I'm disappointed...I thought he developed some sort of fusion generator, a la Back to the Future. Add a flux capacitor and a DeLorean and then I'll really be impressed.
glasses and eyesight used to be one of those really crazy scientific endeavours. how many of use have had huge, unwieldy glasses when we were younger, and trips to the optometrist were like going to some strange laboratory? things like this are fantastic, simplifying the field and making it more accessible to all. i heard about another system developed that can diagnose stimatism by analyzing the red-eye in a photograph. these kinds of scientific endeavours inspire others!
I doubt this would destroy a profession. It would take years for this to spread and there is still a need for Opthomologists. This would just make Optimologists a little less employable. This might actually increase eye glass sales. I know that I need a new perscription but I can't afford the $200 or more for even cheap exam, glasses and frames. If they could lower the cost of the exam, glasses and frames. I would mostly likely buy a new pair every year. I might even get a couple different types for different occations.
I hope his next machine makes the frames. The experiences of folks I know who wear glasses (I don't) has been that the lenses are not the biggest cost, it is the frames. Why do frames cost so damn much? I know super cheap frames would be fine for charitable aid to poor people just so they can see but the cost of your average frames, something that strikes me as pretty simple to make, is way too high in the US.
Are frames really that complex and hard to make or is there a lack of competition in the marketplace?
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
With the right lens, it will.
I want a desktop fabricator that can create a desktop fabricator.
Mmm.... Recursion...
He would need to invent transparent chocolate first, and if that can not be a billion dollar business, then transparent aluminum most certainly will be.
Wow... could it be that in a few years, traditional eye doctors will become obsolete, replaced by scientists and machine assemblers who never see a patient. I'm taking this from the guy who said he could see these next to the blood pressure machine in wal-mart.
Could this be the writing on the wall for any similar "traditionally" professional occupations. If this is the case for eye doctors, which I'm sure didn't "SEE" this coming, I wonder what's next. Could there be a machine that analyzes your blood and prescribes through a vending machine your prescription?
OR... could I be thinking the insane thinking that many slashdotters and other people do when this type of thing is first invented.
Remember that cars were going to fly long before the year 2000.
Certainly every man at his best state is but vapor
I don't see why it should be one or the other. Agreed, we've got a lot of Rambus, Enron and SCO alike companies, but there is also this company, or the body shop, which donates 10% of its profits to charity.
Wenn ist das Nunstueck git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput.
Isn't that aluminum oxide commonly called alumina?
If you look closely at the site, you will see that to effectively get the eyeglass lens molders into work in third-world countries, they will depend on "microentrepreneurs" in those countries selling glasses for about $5 each. These people will, of course, be motivated by the almightly dollar (or rupee or whatever).
Here's his first glasses prototype! Welcome back to the eighties! ;)
But seriously this guy made two wonderfull inventions. They now collect "old" glasses to send to third world but this is a logistics nightmare.
Imagine a simple jeep outfitted with these inventions doing the rounds in poor areas. Put the tester on and voila few minutes later a pair of glasses. 1 day per village. Couple of jeeps. Shouldn't take long at all (after all it is not like glasses need to replaced that often, even in the west once a year is good enough even for still growing kids).
As far as I know it ain't the material that is costly in glasses but the whole distribution process. Plenty of bargain chains around that can offer really really cheap glasses due to scale and not offering specialist lenses. This looks even cheaper for hard to reach areas.
Brilliant.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Get your mod points ready...
I "like" how the story posters of slashdot are blinded by these bland phrases like "good of humanity". What exactly does that mean here? Is he giving it away for free? No, but it will be cheap. Is he opening the IP up? No, it's patent pending. In fact he's begining to sound like a (*gasp*) capitalist! And we all know they been knocked around here enough to be demonized. But unsuprisingly when a capitalist helps the poor by helping himself he's a put up on a pedastal as the savior of humanity, but if he helps himself by helping the rich or even just the middle class he's deridded as a scum sucking bottom feeder business man. Why the double standard, slashdot? Why? Is it because the motives seem more pure or somehow more righteous? That perhaps, because poor people get the short end of the stick all over the world that they don't just need help, but somehow deserve it too? That we are compelled to serve them? And when we don't feel compelled by this directive we've somehow failed at an obvious yet never stated goal of life?
What this guy has done is great, not because it will help poor people but because he's been extremely clever. I hope he makes an assload of money. Of course once he does make a reasonable sum, some people will complain that his motives aren't pure anymore. One can only hope they can synthesize becoming rich and helping poor people in the same thought.
The next remark is false. The previous remark is true.
In more upbeat stores frames are closer to designer clothing. You pay because the costs of designing a new model is only spread over a few models. Ford Focus costs less then say the latest ferrari and that ain't just the cost of manufacturing.
But yes for those in need a single frame design in a couple of sizes (for different size heads) is not that expensive. Just ask any army that used to issue soldiers with glasses. Or for that matter look at the cost of sunglasses.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
He is sued by the people who makes the eyeglasses today?
And you think printer cartridges are expensive now!
Or, instead of reading speculative fiction, maybe you could read "The Story of My Experiments With the Truth" by M.K. Gandhi to find out exactly what would happen if more people in the world were motivated by altruism rather than the almighty dollar.
Usually, there is no interest in finding solutions for the world's poor - because the profit margins are vanishingly small compared to selling things to the world's middle and upper classes.
This guy is great because, while he will be trying to make some money (guy's gotta eat, you know), he engineered a solution for a problem everyone overlooked because despite the potential for improving a great number of people's quality of life, the potential profit margin was too low.
Personally, I think he needs to package this system up and sell it and supplies to the four-eyed with money first. I'd like to be able to print out new lenses whenever I wanted, and if his process really is so much better, it would be cheaper than buying every couple of years from my optometrist.
Yeah, all the eye tests I've had in the last few years have started with the machine. I'm told that some places just use the machine, but I've never seen one and I wouldn't go to one.
I go to the eye doctor to have my eyes checked. This is more than just get the correct glasses. The doctor needs to look in my eye and make sure that all the pieces are still in place.
I've heard of several different problems that need to be checked for once in a while. They all have complex medical names that I haven't a hope of spelling. See your eye doctor regularly and make sure that if you get one of them, it is corrected early.
Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age was a good fiction book on the effects of a society where people have their own personal matter reconstruction equipment. Those with the cheap units are subjected to lives full of cheap commodity throwaway (but completley recyclable!) things, while those with more money for the better equipment can have better, higher quality things. And those able to afford real hand-made objects seem to hold themselves above all that.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
The best bit of this is the automatic it actually finds the correct lens for you eye.
.But this has got to make to whole process so much easier especially when trying to prescribe lenses for young children or those with communication (eg speach) difficulties.
At last something can put on your face and a few minutes later have a correct setting for the lens you need.
I'm sure all the opticians/optomatrists will be sad to loose they jobs (or at least part of the job) to and automated system
The fact it then goes off and quickly makes the lens is purely a plus point in my view.
Not "opening the IP up" would be manufacturing a "black box" that creates eyeglasses that cannot be opened or studied in any way, at least not without the lawyers/hit squad coming after you. The inventor would still have exclusive control over the rights to manufacture it, but no other person would be able to study it in any way.
"Heavens, it appears that my weewee has been stricken with rigor mortis!" -- Stewie Griffin
I have wondered if it were possible to make a program that could help determine the shape of the corrective lens needed for a vision defect.
Since with high resolution monitors and 256 (or more)levels of gray available, it should be possible to create an 'eye chart' that looks bleary and out-of-focus to a normally-sighted person but sharp and clearly-focused to someone with deformed vision.
I imagine a program where the user can adjust the software implementations (precise changes on the screen regards to the blurring of the chart characters that mimic the effect of an individual lens) of the various corrective lens stages of an eye exam. When the user is seeing clear and focused characters on the eye chart, the program would know from the distortions of the normal chart needed to create this clarity exactly what the eyeware prescription would need to be for this individual user.
The user could send the eyeglass perscription to a off-shore eyeware maker and get perscription glasses made at a tiny fraction of inflated American prices. Or order the glasses made by the method developed by the subject of this article.
If you read about the history of eyeglasses, you'll learn that back in the middle ages, when what we, today, call "proper" eyeglasses (not just a simple magnifier, but a lens that corrects for nearsightedness or farsightedness) - were invented, in Venice Italy, their fabrication was a carefully guarded trade secret. Corrective eyeglasses were for the extremely wealthy only. Among the extremely wealthy, of course, were the keepers of this secret.
Think about the millions of people who were functionally blind, and could not afford glasses due to this trade secret.
And now - due to openness of the technique, and this new technology, optical health insurance (and the incredibly obnoxious markups on lenses and frames that came with it) may no longer be necessary. Let's hope so.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
The discount eyeglass makers in my city are offering two pairs of glasses with frames & lenses (subject to some extreme prescriptions) plus eye exam for $69. Can this new technology keep up with the relentless cost-cutting in conventional technology?
I used to purchase my glasses from a "dispensing optician" when I lived in Toronto. The way it worked was that I paid his cost for the lenses and frames, and a fee for his share in things. Lenses were less than CDN$10 a pair (in 1993). So the invention is interesting, but the notion of lessening the cost is unlikely. The cost of lenses is small, but the margin on lenses is high.
--- Bill
No pun intended.
I have keratoconus (basically a deformity in the cornea) and some days I can see fine and some days things are a little blury. The only solutions are either rigid contact lenses (ick) or cornea replacement surgery (double ick). Glasses aren't much of a solution for me because my eyes shift so much that a prescription would maybe last a month or two at most.
Maybe with this device I could cheaply fab lenses that would work for me until my eyes morph again. And then all I'd need to do is fab another pair.
I have trouble with passwords among other things.
It's too bad the original article doesn't say anything about how he makes lenses.
The current trick in low-cost eyeglass distribution for the third world is simply to use a kit of low-cost preformed round plastic lenses. Basic eyeglasses have a spherical component, a cylindrical component, and an axis for the cylindrical component. The lenses are round, and can snap into the frames at different rotations, the number of different lenses needed goes down to a hundred or so. And the whole kit fits in a briefcase.
Actually, most single-vision prescription eyeglasses that you buy at Lenscrafters can be done in about 5-10 minutes; only really strong prescriptions (or bifocals or progressives -- any lens you actually have to grind and polish in the lab) take an hour, and even those usually only take 40 minutes or so.
One-hour labs carry a huge stock of pre-ground, polished and coated single-vision lens blanks around 75mm in diameter. All the lab techs have to do is edge the lens so it fits the frame of your choice.
I was a lab tech at EyeMasters (a short-lived, unregretted Canadian Lenscrafters competitor) for two years. My record was two minutes, twelve seconds from the moment we got the order to the moment the glasses were out the door. These were $500 eyeglasses (and this was ten years ago), with very nice Pentax lenses. It was a lazy Sunday afternoon, and the lab manager and I (the most experienced non-management tech at the time) were the only ones working. Ian grinned at me and said "Let's see how fast we can get this done."
We worked in tandem, he pulled the lenses, I marked them up, he traced the frame, I edged the lenses, he fined the sharp edges off, I had the frame heated up and popped the lenses in, and he did the final prescription, axis and PD checks. Not surprisingly given our experience level, they were absolutely bang on (the law here in Canada, at least at the time, allowed for a maximum quarter-diopter variance; these were perfect).
The customer had chatted with the optician out front for a moment after she'd handed in our job. Ian caught him just as he was walking out the door:
"Sir. Sir! Your glasses are ready."
"I'm sorry; there must be some mistake. I just barely submitted my order."
"I know, sir. They're done. Why don't you let the optician fit them for you?"
Jen double-checked everything (by law, the dispensing optician must) and gave us an "OK, I'm impressed" look and a thumbs-up.
We always used to laugh at those Lenscrafters commercials that would show a stopwatch stopping at, say, 54 minutes. Try a tenth of that. The one-hour promise just gives enough buffer time to redo 95%+ of all jobs (sometimes twice) if you screw up.