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Scientists Create Electronic Glasses That Can Automatically Focus On Whatever You're Looking At (engadget.com)
mmell writes: University of Utah scientists have created a prototype electronic lens which uses several technologies to customize the lens optics focusing on whatever the wearer is looking at. [Just like] the "oil lenses" in Frank Herbert's Dune series of novels, the electronic lens (a transparent LCD) can have its index of refractivity modified by application of a small electric current. While I can conceive many uses for this technology (in spacecraft instruments, webcams/Handycams, handheld binoculars and telescopes for example), these were developed as a replacement for the progressive lenses -- a.k.a. bifocals -- which are worn by many with less than perfect eyesight. Many eyeglass wearers don't tolerate bifocals well and I wonder if the adaptive optics in this prototype could relieve them of the need to carry multiple pairs of glasses? Whether they prove cost effective for the role of eyeglasses or not (and I can see no reason why they shouldn't), the applications for this technology seem quite diverse and potentially even revolutionary. I wonder how long it will be before these are more than just a prototype?
Glasses can try to adjust the focus based on the perceived distance, but cannot know you are not looking at the wall, but at the fly hoovering between you and the wall. So without looking at the eye trying to focus this is pretty useless.
Can they become completely opaque when the wearer looks at something that might be deemed perilous to you?
I was discussing this type of technology with my eye doctor about a month ago. She said that a lot of the technology for adaptive glasses and LCD glasses (but not the eye tracking part) are already tied up by patent holders who will not license them. Things like using the LCD to make sunglasses and other things at a similar tech level. She said there there was so much money in traditional glasses that they were sitting on "high tech" glasses so they wouldn't eat into their own profit margins. Not sure how much there is to this, but I've no reason to disbelieve her. If so, I wonder if that could put a stop to or slow glasses like these.
Things about living in the future - this is the one technology I has been waiting for years, for before I need reading glasses! Now please go and take that to market! And if you want to include some mosquito-killer-lasers in the process I would not mind.
-><- no
I kinda like the chunky look of the glasses, but the one thing that comes to mind if wearing them while driving is the last of peripheral vision they allow.
The lens is quite small, effectively give you tunnel vision (albeit it with perfect clarity), but outside of that smallish window, your completely blinded.
I know it's a prototype, and they do mention that work needs to be done to make them look better, but I hope they can also vastly reduce the thickness of the frames and arms, reduce the weight, and increase the size of the lens so that they are actually useful.
I'm sure I'll soon be in a position again to be requiring glasses, so something like this will likely be really useful to me in the not-too-distant future - hopefully long enough for them to work out these little details.
It's because 99.9% of progressive lenses have a semi-custom lens ground into one side, but a standardized lens ground into the other, with no regard for getting the optics right anywhere besides the center vertical axis.
It IS possible to make better glasses using raytracing (to design) and custom grinding (to implement) on both sides to "get it right" along the horizontal axis, too... but those lenses are expensive, and you'll only see a dramatic improvement if
1) the optician gets all the measurements precisely right (they rarely do, because full custom lenses are expensive, few stores sell more than one or two pairs a year, and they require more measurements than "normal" lenses that most techs don't fully understand);
2) The glasses are meticulously adjusted for proper alignment... and kept in proper alignment with frequent adjustments.
Realistically, you're looking at glasses that cost about $600-1,000/pair PLUS the frame cost.
The tech was developed for custom progressive lenses, but it can also be used to make better single-vision lenses for people with astigmatism. Normal glasses have a standardized sphere + base curve manufactured into one side, and a non-optimized cylindrical lens ground onto the other side (usually, without regard for lens angle or lens distance FROM pupil). I believe full-custom single-vision lenses run about $500-800 more than "regular" (non-optimized) ones.
The magic word to say & demand when asking about such lenses is "freeform" (often, used in conjunction with "custom" and/or "high-definition"). Just be aware that the optician's skill & experience fitting freeform lenses is ENORMOUSLY important. Even freeform custom lenses can suck if the optician is careless with his/her measurements. And demand the specific word "freeform" -- unlike other marketing terms, "freeform" has a very specific meaning in the industry. Not all lenses advertised as "hi-def" or "custom" are literally "freeform". At least one brand that's "semi-custom" exists that grinds a customized & optimized cyl onto one side of a lens manufactured with a standard sph+base curve on the other. For SV astigmatism, semi-custom might be good enough... but for progressive, you really want full-blown two-surface freeform custom lenses.
Thanks. So far, this is the only comment that mentions this. A "transparent LCD" having anything to do with the focus of a lens made zero sense to me. The term LCD is also nowhere to be found in either article linked. It's not even some cool liquid-crystal effect; they're just stretching a bag of goo (glycerin) with little actuators to change the shape; vaguely mimicking the mechanism of the lens on the human eye. If you ask me, they should go further and make it a composite elastomere; like clear polyurethane rubber with fiberglass or plastic fiber reinforcement to direct how the lens deforms. I bet they went with a glycerin-filled bag because smaller actuators didn't have the strength needed to deform solid rubber properly.
Mass-production vs one-off customization. Even with robots and CAM to handle the grinding, it still takes more time and effort to grind two lens surfaces instead of just one... and more effort to calculate custom lenses instead of blindly grinding another standardized design on the other side.
That said, I think that competition from cheap online labs will force traditional retailers to reduce the cost of freeform lenses and market them more aggressively. If you can take your prescription and buy a mediocre pair of glasses for $15 online, why would you pay $50-100 for an equally-mediocre pair? On the other hand, if a mediocre pair is $15, but a freeform pair is $200, and the freeform pair is sufficiently better to feel like a HUGE improvement, people will pay the higher cost for the quality pair (even IF they buy a cheap mediocre pair online to keep as a spare pair). By (US) law, your "prescription" (sph, cyl, axis, prism) have to be provided on demand so you can use it elsewhere, but the measurements needed to make custom lenses for a pair of frames are still considered proprietary (and are pretty damn hard to measure without the proper equipment), so they aren't required to share them with you. Ten years from now, mediocre online glasses will be regarded the way drugstore reading glasses are now... something that's better than nothing if you're poor or need a spare, but blatantly inferior to "real" glasses.
As far as SV lenses for astigmatism go, the main advantage of two-sided freeform fully-custom over single-sided freeform semi-custom is aesthetics... with control over BOTH surfaces, you can neutralize things like magnification/minification (so your eyes don't look larger or smaller to observers seeing them through the lens), and adjust the base curve near the periphery to allow thinner lenses. If you only have full freedom over one surface, you can optimize for optics at the expense of thicker lenses, or thinner lenses at the cost of optic fidelity, and your ability to neutralize out magnification/minification will be severely constrained.
From what I've been read, single-surface semi-custom freeform is a HUGE step forward from single-surface lenses ground with traditional standard curves, but the difference between single- and double-surface freeform (for SV astigmatism) is more like the difference between 480p24 from a DVD and 720p24 from Blu-Ray... it's there, but it's not nearly as dramatic as the difference between nominal-480i60 from VHS and 480p24 from DVD.
I believe lenses marketed as "aspheric" are basically designed the way freeform lenses are (with raytracing), but are mass-produced in only a few permutations of sph+cyl... and usually, optimized for thinness over optics. Personally, I wouldn't bother with them... they cost almost as much as single-surface freeform lenses, and don't provide nearly as much optical improvement.