A significant breakthrough has occurred with the successful use of an augmented reality contact lens by a human for the first time.
A human has recently worn an AR contact lens for the first time, which has a pixel thickness approximately 30 times greater than that of a smartphone.
A group of people interacted with a combination of real and virtual items three decades ago, using a large exoskeleton for their upper body, a vision system suspended from the ceiling, and their hands to perform tasks that required interaction with physical and simulated objects. They were the first team of human subjects to experiment with the Virtual Fixtures platform, an augmented reality prototype system developed and tested at the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). The equipment was quite expensive, costing nearly $1 million and occupying half of a room. However, it worked– revealing for the first time that AR could enhance human performance in real-world activities.
A major achievement was accomplished in the area of augmented reality (AR) technology, indicating the significant progress made in the last 30 years. The milestone was the initial authentic trial of an AR contact lens, which took place at the Mojo Vision research facility situated in Saratoga, California. And no, it wasn’t an unrefined bench test with oversized equipment. For the first time, a valid experiment was conducted in which an AR contact lens was directly placed onto a human eye.
The difficulty of innovating
Although it may not seem significant initially, this accomplishment is groundbreaking. Creating an augmented reality contact lens that can be worn is an extremely difficult engineering task.
While some may assume that the most difficult aspect of creating contact lenses with high-resolution displays is the main challenge, it is not necessarily the case. Certainly, the ability to place a high-resolution display on a tiny transparent lens is hard, yet it’s not the most difficult piece of the puzzle.
The primary issue is that this small lens must sit comfortably on the human eye and establish a wireless connection with external devices, all while being powered without any physical connection. That is a challenging task, yet it is what Mojo Vision accomplished in its latest presentation.
Louis Rosenberg stated: “we will certainly recall the years when people strolled down the street, necks bent, staring down at little displays in their hands as a ridiculously primitive means to connect with information.”
According to Mojo Vision, the model lens consists of medical-grade micro-batteries. It doubts what the battery life is for the present prototype; nonetheless, according to the company, their product goal is power monitoring that allows for all-day wear.
Certainly, their screen innovation goes over also. According to the company, the Mojo Lens has a 14,000-pixel-per-inch MicroLED display with a pixel pitch (the distance between surrounding pixels) of 1.8 microns.
To provide some perspective, an iPhone 13 with a Super Retina XDR Display has a resolution of 460 pixels per inch. In comparison, the hardware of the Mojo Lens has a pixel density of approximately 30 times higher. Not only that, but these lenses also contain an ARM CPU, a 5GHz radio transmitter, and a gyroscope, accelerometer, and magnetometer to monitor eye movements, all while resting directly on the human eye.
The next big leap
Even so, several years of advancement will be needed to get from today’s prototypes to a mass-market consumer product that brings immersive AR capabilities to individuals all over the world.
Assuming I were to make a forecast, I would anticipate that augmented reality eyewear would first be introduced as glasses and gradually transition to contact lenses as technology advances. Ultimately, it could replace mobile phones as the primary means of interacting with digital content.
Furthermore, I envision that augmented reality will completely revolutionize the way we interact with information, transforming digital content from discrete items we choose to access into integrated components of our physical environment.
Now, we will look back on the past decades when individuals walked around with their necks bent, looking down at small screens in their hands as an extremely primitive way of interacting with information. Whether this transformation will happen within the next decade remains to be seen. Nonetheless, the progress made by Mojo Vision is a significant step towards achieving this goal.
Originally published by: Bigthink
